Dirk Niepelt

The new edition features an interview with Javier Bianchi. PDF. It is “my” last Newsletter since I left the Center yesterday.

On the question whether the Fed should seriously consider retail CBDC, the FT sides with the pro camp. While elsewhere such central bank digital currencies can appear “a solution in search of a problem”, America’s lacklustre retail banking system and the importance of the dollar in cross-border money flows make an obvious case for reform. Compare the contributions by Darrell Duffie and Chris Waller in the CEPR eBook.

CEPR Discussion Paper 16906, January 2022, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF (local copy). We investigate how politico-economic factors shaped government responses to the spread of COVID-19. Our simple framework uses epidemiological, economic and politico-economic arguments. Confronting the theory with US state level data we find strong evidence for partisanship even when we control for fundamentals including the electorate’s political views. Moreover, we detect an important role for the...

Wirtschaft Regional, January 7, 2022. PDF. Interview on private and public money, digital payments, Bitcoin, cash.

Wirtschaft Regional, January 7, 2022. PDF. Interview on private and public money, digital payments, Bitcoin, cash.

Blog post by Dave Peck and the PSL team. Some issues they discuss: Very few categories of data belong on-chain … Today’s smart contract programming models are deeply flawed … Smart contracts can’t reference the “real-world”. They can only reference the blockchain itself. This is known as the “oracle problem” and it makes blockchains a necessarily closed system. This may sound like a trivial problem, but it is actually profound. For instance, it forces smart contract developers to jump...

BA seminar at the University of Bern. Uni Bern’s official course page: The seminar targets students who have completed their mandatory training in microeconomics, macroeconomics and mathematics (i.e., students in the second half of their BA studies) and who are interested in modern macroeconomic theory. We analyze arguments according to which the government does, or does not face an intertemporal budget constraint. What does the literature on asset pricing, rational bubbles, or the fiscal...

BA course at the University of Bern. Uni Bern’s official course page: The course targets students who have completed their mandatory training in microeconomics, macroeconomics and mathematics (i.e., students in the second half of their BA studies) and who are interested in modern macroeconomic theory. The objective of the course is threefold: Students should learn to think analytically, like economists do; they should understand select tools of modern macroeconomic theory; and they should...

MA course at the University of Bern. Uni Bern’s official course page: This course covers macroeconomic theories of fiscal policy (including tax and debt policy) and the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy. Participants should be familiar with the material covered in the course Macroeconomics II. The course grade reflects the final exam grade. Monday, 12.15 – 14.00 h 1st exam: Monday, May 30, 2022, 12.15 – 14.00h 2nd exam: Monday, September 12, 2022, 12.15 – 14.00h The classes...

Goodreads rating: 4.39. The book offers a brief tour of the physics behind climate change and the role played by human activity; a skeptical discussion of climate models; some stronger, some weaker examples of distorted reports, by scientists and the media, regarding causal links between human activity, climate change, and extreme weather events, sea level change, or production (opponents claim that these examples are cherry-picked; Koonin retorts that scientific reports should be...