A new paper from SARB estimates that the estimated cost of using cash amounts to 1.2% of GDP in South Africa. High security and transit expenses play an important role in raising the economic cost of cash in the country. Today’s post collects available estimates from a variety of central bank and academic studies, and adds back-of-the-envelope estimates for several countries based on others’ estimates of average transaction costs and currency in circulation.
Footnote
For some countries our back-of-the-envelope estimates are likely to have large confidence intervals around them, especially New Zealand (where only direct cost estimates are available), United States (where 2013 costs estimates were used), Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico and Turkey.
