Tag Archives: Economic equivalence

“CBDC and Monetary Architecture,” UniBe DP, 2025

UniBe VWI Discussion Paper 25-09, October 2025. PDF.

We review the macroeconomic literature on retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), organizing the discussion around a CBDC-irrelevance result. We identify both fundamental and policy-related sources of relevance, or departures from neutrality. Bank disintermediation—the crowding out of deposits—does not, by itself, constitute such a source. We argue that the literature has primarily focused on policy-related sources of non-neutrality, often without making this focus explicit. From a macroeconomic perspective, CBDC is, at its core, a matter of monetary architecture, and political economy considerations are central to understanding CBDC policy design.

“Digitales Zentralbankgeld (Central Bank Digital Currency),” FuW, 2019

Finanz und Wirtschaft, June 29, 2019. PDF. Related article in Oekonomenstimme, July 9, 2019. HTML.

    • It is not central bank digital currency (CBDC) per se which might act as a game changer in financial markets. What will be key is how central banks accommodate the introduction of CBDC.
    • In principle, this accommodation can go very far, to the point where the introduction of CBDC does not affect macroeconomic outcomes.
    • But such complete accommodation is unlikely. On the one hand, central banks will want to exploit the new monetary policy options that CBDC opens up; that is, central banks will not choose to fully accommodate.
    • On the other hand, the introduction of CBDC increases transparency and this will increase political pressure; as a consequence, central banks will not be able to fully accommodate.