BOUHDAOUI Yassine

Technological and organizational constraints hinder entrepreneurial ability in alertly selecting/exploiting new opportunities. This article aims at showing that the complexity of the environment shapes entrepreneurial alertness. We build an experiment to mimic the choice alertness process (a case of eustress) and measure alertness and its relations with opportunity appearances, entrepreneurial effort, and complexity of the production structure. We show that alertness increases with the selection of more opportunities, but not with the complexity of the environment itself. At the same time, the entrepreneurial effort rate reduces alertness significantly more when participants are in a complex environment.

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Despite various payment innovations, today, cash is still heavily used to pay for low-value purchases. This paper develops a simulation model to test whether standard implications of the theory on cash management and payment choices can explain the use of payment instruments by transaction size. In particular, using diary survey data from Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands, we test the assumption that cash is still the most efficient payment instrument, and the idea that people hold cash for precautionary reasons when facing uncertainty about their future purchases. The results of the simulations show that these two factors are significant determinants of the high shares of low-value cash payments in Canada, France and Germany. Yet, they are not so crucial in the Netherlands, which exhibits a significant share of low-value card transactions. We discuss how the differences in payment markets across countries may explain the performance of the model.

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Empirical studies on the social cost of payments agree that cash is the most costly payment instrument for society. Central and commercial banks have implemented various strategies to reduce both the holding and use of cash in payments. These include a category of so-called non-price strategies such as improving the currency division system (CDS) and changing the technology for making cash. However, the actual effectiveness of these strategies is subject to debate. This thesis contributes to this field of study through the determination of optimal currency divisions and the cost-effectiveness of MDS. It provides a better understanding of the implications of both payment behavior, manufacturing technology, and MDS structure on the distribution of cash transactions in the economy and the social cost of cash. First, we relax some restrictive assumptions in comparing the efficiency of MDS based on an empirical distribution of cash transactions in France. Second, we question a widely held view that efficient MDSs reduce the social cost of payments and also establish that payment solutions that are efficient in terms of the least effort principle may be more costly for the central bank. We propose a novel framework for measuring the benefit of adopting a new cash technology and, finally, we compare the social cost of two SDMs by simulating a mature version of the search models.

Empirical studies on the social cost of payments all agree to recognize that coins and bills are the most costly payment instruments for society. In recent years, commercial and central banks implemented various strategies to reduce the holdings and the use of cash. Of these, non-pricing strategies such as the improvement of the currency system or the change of the manufacturing technology have been implemented. However, their actual effectiveness is an issue of discussion. This PhD deals with these non-pricing strategies, namely the optimal denominations for coins and banknotes, the cost efficiency of currency systems and payment instruments. The aim is to better understand the implications of the payment behavior, the manufacturing technology and the structure of the monetary denomination system (MDS) on the distribution of cash transactions in the economy and their social cost. First, we analyze the consequences of relaxing some restrictive assumptions of theoretical studies that compare the efficiency of MDS based on a French empirical distribution of cash transactions obtained from a nationally representative household survey. Next, we challenge the widespread belief that an efficient MDS reduces the social cost of cash by differentiating the variable costs of production of currency and fixed costs per denomination. We show that efficient payment solutions in terms of the principle of least effort may be more costly for the central bank, propose an original framework to measure the profitability of the adoption of a new manufacturing technology of currency and finally, parameterize and simulate a search model of money to compare the social cost of multiple MDS.