Pricing Payment Cards
研究了Visa等支付卡网络如何设定商户银行向持卡人银行支付的交换费，发现利润最大化的费用会导致低效的价格结构，过度补贴持卡人使用而过度向商户收费，并解释了这种系统性扭曲的原因。
Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial “interchange” fees to cardholders' banks on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, oversubsidizing card usage and overtaxing merchants. We show that this distortion is systematic and arises from the fact that consumers make two distinct decisions (membership and usage), whereas merchants make only one (membership). In general, we contribute to the theory of two-sided markets by introducing a model that distinguishes between extensive and intensive margins, thereby explaining why two-part tariffs are useful pricing tools for platforms.