Dirk Niepelt

The Marshall Islands CBDC project moves forward. Algorand, the project partner, reports that blockchain for the world’s first national digital currency, the Marshallese sovereign (SOV), will be built using Algorand technology. The SOV will circulate alongside the US dollar and help the Marshall Islands efficiently operate in the global economy.

The Central Bankers Course ”Monetary Policy, Exchange Rates, and Capital Flows” has been postponed to 2021. Doctoral courses currently take place as usual, subject to the following restrictions: Participants are not allowed to attend Study Center Gerzensee events nor enter the Center’s premises for 14 days after returning from areas where the Coronavirus has spread. As of 2 March 2020, these areas are China, South Korea, Singapore, Iran, and Northern Italy defined as Tuscany,...

In its Quarterly Review, the BIS offers nice perspectives on the future of payments. Morten Bech and Jenny Hancock survey innovations in payments, and where the problems lie. Tara Rice, Goetz von Peter and Codruta Boar examine the fall in the number of correspondent banks. Morten Bech, Umar Faruqui and Takeshi Shirakami discuss cross border payments. Morten Bech, Jenny Hancock, Tara Rice and Amber Wadsworth discuss securities settlement. And Raphael Auer and Rainer Böhme explore design...

The Riksbank starts a pilot project with Accenture to develop a technical solution for a retail e-krona. Users shall be able to hold e-kronor in a digital wallet, make payments, deposits and withdrawals via a mobile app. The user shall also be able to make payments via wearables, such as smart watches, and cards. The pilot runs for a year, on a distributed ledger, according to the Riksbank’s press release. More detailed information is contained in this note.

Econs (a non-profit project of the communications department of the Russian central bank), February 13, 2020. HTML. Russian version of my VoxEU column on digital money and CBDC. What are we actually talking about? What do we know? And what should policymakers do? I discuss the following points: Finance has been digital forever – what’s new about ‘digital money’? Does the nature of money change? What is central bank digital currency? What is the link between CBDC and the blockchain? Would...

MA course at the University of Bern. The classes follow selected chapters in the textbook Macroeconomic Analysis (MIT Press, 2019) and build on the material covered in the macro II course which follows the same text. Table of contents of the book. Uni Bern’s official course page. Main contents: Concepts. RA model with government spending and taxes. Government debt in RA model. Government debt and social security in OLG model. Neutrality results. Consolidated government budget constraint....

In Foreign Affairs, Paul Romer criticizes “pretend economists” who pretend that economics—and they themselves—can answer normative questions on scientific grounds. He argues that “pretend economists” open the field to corruption. The alternative is to make honesty and humility prerequisites for membership in the community of economists. The easy part is to challenge the pretenders. The hard part is to say no when government officials look to economists for an answer to a normative...

Macroeconomic Analysis available at Rakuten.

VoxEU, February 3, 2020. HTML. What are we actually talking about? What do we know? And what should policymakers do? I discuss the following points: Finance has been digital forever – what’s new about ‘digital money’? Does the nature of money change? What is central bank digital currency? What is the link between CBDC and the blockchain? Would CBDC have macroeconomic effects? Would CBDC foster bank disintermediation and bank runs? Why consider CBDC at all? What opportunities does CBDC...

An intriguing description of America’s intelligence community and the industry surrounding it; the slippery slopes; and Snowden’s motivation for following his conscience rather than the money. From the book, how we got here: [After 9/11] [n]early a hundred thousand spies returned to work at the agencies with the knowledge that they’d failed at their primary job, which was protecting America. … In retrospect, my country … could have used this rare moment of solidarity to reinforce...