Dirk Niepelt

The research policy network on Fintech and Digital Currencies has an ever-expanding list of issues for its researchers. Dirk Niepelt of the University of Bern, RPN director, explains what's top of the agenda for central banks and policymakers, and how the RPN can influence their decisions.

In the FAZ, Christian Siedenbiedel discusses a ZEW study on the positions of ECB board members and how they relate to national debt levels. Es gibt klare Fraktionen von „Falken“ und „Tauben“ im Rat, und es gibt eine gewisse Korrelation zur Höhe der Staatsschulden im jeweiligen Heimatland des Ratsmitglieds. Als „Tauben“ wurden nach der Daten-Auswertung die Ratsmitglieder Ignazio Visco (Italien), Pablo Hernández de Cos (Spanien), François Villeroy de Galhau (Frankreich), Giannis...

In the NZZ, Hansueli Schöchli summarizes recent evidence. Wer in der Schweiz im Jahr 2017 wie viel Einkommenssteuer bezahlte Anteil Steuerpflichtige (in Prozent) Anzahl Steuerpflichtige Minimales Reineinkommen in Fr. Durchschnittliche Steuerbelastung (in %) Anteil der Einkommenssteuer Bund/Kanton/Gemeinde (in %) 0,01 515 4 548 020 43,8 4,82 0,1 5 150 1 109 760 37,3 9,89 1 51 498 331 731 34,4 24,04 5 257 489 152 799 28,1 42,55 10 514 978 111 403 24,6 53,03 25 1 287 444 73 769...

MA course at the University of Bern. Time: Wed 10-12. Location: A-126 UniS. Course assistant: Stefano Corbellini. The course introduces Master students to modern macroeconomic theory. Building on the analysis of the consumption-saving tradeoff and on concepts from general equilibrium theory, the course covers workhorse general equilibrium models of modern macroeconomics, including the representative agent framework, the overlapping generations model, and the Lucas tree model....

NZZ, August 10, 2021. PDF (title changed by NZZ). Should the SNB follow the Fed and the ECB and rework its strategy? There is a case for rethinking the broad inflation target, the monetary policy concept, and the communication strategy. Equally important is a strategy review outside of the SNB: The SNB cannot and must not decide about the framework within which it operates. Conclusion: Daher ist eine Strategieüberprüfung inner- und ausserhalb der SNB sinnvoll. Geldpolitisch...

John Cochrane on the role of cheap clean energy which by itself will not reduce CO2 in the long run: The standard vision in policy discussions assumes infinite substitutability. As soon as the cost of clean energy is lower than the cost of carbon-emitting energy, everyone substitutes completely to the latter and the oil and coal stay in the ground. … But as long as the elasticity of substitution is finite … then the carbon comes out of the ground. As you use less and less, the...

John Cochrane on climate change and financial stability: Climate change and financial stability are pressing problems. They require coherent, intelligent, scientifically valid policy responses, and promptly. But climate financial regulation will not help the climate, will further politicize central banks, and will destroy their precious independence, while forcing financial companies to devise absurdly fictitious climate-risk assessments will ruin financial regulation. The next...

In a CEPR discussion paper, Anna Gelpern, Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, Brad Parks, and Christoph Trebesch document “How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments:” China is the world’s largest official creditor, but we lack basic facts about the terms and conditions of its lending. … We collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries … First, the Chinese contracts contain...

In his University of St. Gallen MA thesis entitled “CBDC with Collateralized Pass-Through Funding,” Bastian Wetzel assesses how strongly banks would be affected by deposit outflows into retail CBDC: The results of the study show that 92.7 percent of all sight deposits in the aggregate Swiss banking sector are covered by excess liquidity and eligible assets, whereas sight deposits held in CHF are covered by over 100 percent. Therefore, the collateral constraint seems to be a problem...

In an NBER working paper, Matthias Fleckenstein and Francis Longstaff argue that Treasuries do not trade at a premium: It is widely believed that Treasuries trade at premium prices because of their safety and money-like properties. In reality, this is only true on a relative basis when compared to other bonds, but is often not true on an absolute basis. Many Treasuries have repeatedly traded at substantial discounts to their intrinsic fair values for extended periods during the past...