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Direct cash transfers to households during the COVID-19 pandemic, including relief checks and Child Tax Credit payments, were delayed by weeks for recipients without bank accounts and were not received by many non-filers who lacked the time or resources to complete necessary paperwork. A postal banking system has the potential to expand access to financial infrastructure and enable the rapid distribution of resources to households in need during economic downturns – often the same households that are currently excluded from the financial system. This paper examines the history of the US Postal Savings System and the feasibility of a return to postal banking using evidence on the socioeconomic and spatial patterns of financial exclusion. We find that postal banks would be well positioned to compete with both alternative and conventional financial institutions, address issues with physical branch access, and improve outreach to vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren' Keynes defined the economic problem as the 'struggle for subsistence' (1972, p. 326). Its solution required providing the entire population with enough income to [...]

The U.S. Savings Challenge: Policy Options for Productivity and Growth. Edited by CHARLS E. WALKER, MARK A. BLOOMFIELD and MARGO THORNING, Boulder: Westview Press, 1990. A simple macroeconomic identity holds [...]

By James Angresano, Cheltenham, UK and Lyme, US: Edward Elgar 1997, 197 pp. $80.00. 1998 marks the centeniary of the birth of Gunnar Myrdal, one of the more important and [...]

In his last major work, The Challenge of Humanistic Economics, Mark Lutz (and Lux 1979) provided a compelling critique of neoclassical economics. But he attempted to do much more than [...]

Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess. By Robert H. Frank. New York: Free Press, 1999, 326 pp. $25.00.. One hundred years ago, Thorstein Veblen [...]