Regulation of the Money Order Industry
分析美国汇票行业的经济特征，基于1977年两家大型汇票公司倒闭导致用户损失的事件，探讨监管提案的合理性，为政策制定者提供行业数据支持。
Money orders have been available in this country since the 1860s. Nearly a billion were sold in 1977, with a total value of over $40 billion. Until recently, however, there has been very little analysis of the economics of the industry, and even less attention has been paid to the public policy implications of a part of the payments system used most heavily by the nonaffluent. It took the failure in 1977 of United States Navigation and Universal Money Orders to focus public attention on the industry. Both of those firms, large issuers of money orders, were subsidiaries of International Express. Their failure left some 250,000 customers holding over $15 million of dishonored money orders, giving rise to proposals for new regulation of the industry. The lack of solid information on the size and operating characteristics of the money order business, however, has made analysis of those proposals difficult. Our study attempts to remedy that lack by gathering and analyzing data relevant to the question of regulation of issuers and protection of users.