Abstract

One of the key success factors of the regulatory involvement by the European Commission (EC) in card payment markets across Europe is the reduction of merchant service charges for retailers and final prices for goods and services for consumers. In light of the EC’s scheduled review of the impacts of the policy intervention, this paper evaluates the usability of the event study analysis to determine the impacts of the interchange fee regulation. Findings show that 1 April 2009 is the single, statistically significant date in relation to the regulation. Contrary to common rationale, positive excess returns are recorded for issuers (9 percent-pts), pure issuers (9 percent-pts), and merchants (4.8 percent-pts), primarily driven by previous uncertainty of investors around a potential ban on interchange fees. As a consequence, total market capitalization for the retail industry increased by 11.2 billion Euro. This results in a partial pass-through rate of 46 percent from acquirers to merchants. The event study is deemed a suitable methodology to complement existing research techniques in this field. To determine ultimate pass-through to consumers, further investigation on the prevalent manifestation of issuer–acquirers needs to be conducted.

中文翻译：

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对《欧洲互换费条例》的影响进行的事件研究分析*

摘要

欧盟委员会（EC）参与整个欧洲卡支付市场的监管成功的关键因素之一是降低了零售商的零售商服务费以及消费者的商品和服务最终价格。根据EC对政策干预影响的定期审查，本文评估了事件研究分析的有效性，以确定交换费监管的影响。调查结果表明，相对于该法规，2009年4月1日是唯一的具有统计意义的日期。与普遍原理相反，发行人（9％-pts），纯发行人（9％-pts）和商人（4.8％-pts）录得正超额收益，这主要是由投资者先前对潜在禁止互换的不确定性驱动的费用。作为结果，零售业的总市值增加了112亿欧元。这导致从收单方到商家的部分通过率达到46％。事件研究被认为是补充该领域现有研究技术的合适方法。为了确定最终传递给消费者的情况，需要对发行人-收单人的普遍表现进行进一步调查。