It is still debated to which degree the “Great Moderation” that had started in the mid-1980s and was observed until the middle of last year, and that consisted of a remarkable reduction of volatilities in the real economy, has influenced the overall assessment of the quantity of  8  See in particular R. J. Caballero and A. Krishnamurthy, “Collective risk management in a flight to quality episode”, Journal of Finance, October 2008.
The first survey collects the volume and value of checks paid by a relatively large sample of depository institutions from which we hope to estimate the total volume and value of check payments in the U.S. A second survey will collect check-payment data from which to estimate the use of checks by broad categories of payment types.