2009 March 09

This lecture will take place at 11:30 a.m. in the "DZ Bank Lecture Room" of the House of Finance (Campus Westend).

[Dr. Martin Diehl, Bundesbank]

Most recently, the topology of a few payment systems has been analysed by network analysts. Drawing on the basics of research in other complex systems the approach of network analysis is used to describe features of payments systems. Network analysis together with means for visualization provide a stimulating view on payments and warrants a lot of insights which have hitherto been felt but not measured. However, the approach is yet far from providing a workable tool to support payments system policy and oversight. The usefulness of the approach increases with more systems analysed providing a basis for cross-country comparison and time-series. In addition, further improvements have to help current network analysis to leave the realm of descriptive statistics in order to become a valuable tool for policy makers.