Dirk Niepelt

The Economist reports about cyber thieves “outsmarting” a smart contract. Well, what does that mean? Engaging with a code that runs in all states of the world is to engage with a complete contract. How can one outsmart a complete contract? Previous post on smart contracts and commitment.

A progress update by the Bank of England describes the Bank’s intention, over time, to extend direct access to RTGS to non-bank Payment Service Providers (firms granted the status of E-Money Institutions or Payment Institutions in the UK), collectively known as PSPs. By extending RTGS access, our objective is to increase competition and innovation in the market for payment services.

In the NZZ, Andrea Köhler qualifies the micro aggression debate on US college campuses as a “witch hunt.” Um keine Missverständnisse aufkommen zu lassen: Der allgemeine Konsens, Diskriminierung zu ahnden, ist hier nicht gemeint. Selbstverständlich gilt es, traumatisierte Menschen zu unterstützen und Minoritäten zu schützen; letzteres hat das Attentat von Orlando einmal mehr deutlich gemacht. Doch die Hypersensibilität an den Universitäten unterminiert jede Form des intellektuellen...

Jonathan McMillan proposes a systemic solvency rule which stipulates that [t]he value of the real assets of a company has to be greater than or equal to the value of the company’s liabilities in the worst financial state. (p. 147) That is, the financial assets of a company have to be financed by equity. This reminds of Kotlikoff’s limited purpose banking, see here and here. McMillan (who is actually two persons, a banker and a journalist) argues that Kotlikoff’s proposal is a step in the...

Presentation and Q&A session at an event organized jointly by the CFA Institute and the CFA Society Switzerland. Live webcast.

The German Federal Constitutional Court has decided that the policy decision on the OMT program does not “manifestly” exceed the competences attributed to the European Central Bank: If the conditions formulated by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its judgment of 16 June 2015 (C-62/14) and intended to limit the scope of the OMT programme are met, the complainants’ rights under Art. 38 sec. 1 sentence 1, Art. 20 secs. 1 and 2 in conjunction with Art. 79 sec. 3 of the Basic Law...

In a blog post, Stephen Williamson argues that the US labor market is doing just fine. Given recent productivity growth, and the prospects for employment growth, output growth is going to be low. I’ll say 1.0%-2.0%. And that’s if nothing extraordinary happens. Though we can expect poor performance – low output and employment growth – relative to post-WWII time series for the United States, there is nothing currently in sight that represents an inefficiency that monetary policy could...

The Economist reports about a simple test of the plausibility of published research, and that many well published psychology papers failed it.

In the FT, Philip Stafford reports about a digital currency initiative by the Bank of Canada and commercial banks. It will involve issuing, transferring and settling central bank assets on a distributed ledger via a token named CAD-Coin. But: The Bank of Canada said the experiment was a proof-of-concept and confined to interbank payment systems. … “None of our experiments are to develop central-bank issued e-money‎ for use by the general public.”

SRF, Tagesgespräch, June 16, 2016. HTML with link to MP3. Half-hour-long interview on the Swiss news channel. Topics include monetary policy, exchange rates, financial stability, Brexit.