Krzysztof WozniakService fees continue to proliferate in a wide range of markets, from retail to payments, generating questions about their impact on consumer choice, competition, and fairness. This paper explores how sensitivity to such fees varies across consumers, use cases, and competitive settings, and whether it is affected by consumer learning. I am able to conduct this in-depth empirical analysis thanks to a uniquely detailed, high-frequency panel data set on surcharged ATM cash withdrawals.

Does it make sense to wait until late December to wrap up, like these California shoppers did in 2023? Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesAmazon, Costco, Target, Walmart and other retailers begin their holiday sales as early as October.

This paper studies the European Central Bank’s (ECB) perception of non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) and how this perception is publicly communicated. We construct a perception index based on ECB speeches over the period 1998–2025. Sentiment in references to non-banks is classified by a large language model that we fine-tune on our own hand-labeled dataset constructed for this purpose. The resulting index reveals a predominantly negative and declining perception over time, particularly since the Global Financial Crisis.

Prostock-studio/ShutterstockIn Nosferatu (1922), one of cinema’s most haunting images arrives before the vampire himself: his shadow. Something is approaching, but we don’t know exactly what it is, or what will happen when it arrives. The fear lies in the anticipation.