摘要：After safety, the efficiency of a nation's payment system is a primary concern
of central banks. Since electronic payments are typically cheaper than
paper-based or cash payments, pricing these transactions should speed up the
shift to electronics. But by how much? Norway explicitly priced point-of-sale
and bill-payment transactions and rapidly shifted to electronic payments, while
the Netherlands experienced a similar shift without pricing. Controlling for
terminal availability and differences between countries, direct pricing
accelerated the shift to electronics by about 20 percent. The quid pro quo was
the elimination of bank-float revenues.
