Tag Archives: Central bank digital currency

After leaving office, many central bank governors and senior central bank policymakers tend to become more vocal in questioning the dominant role of commercial bank money in providing liquidity to households and firms. Consider, for example, Mervyn King’s 2016 book The End of Alchemy or Andy Haldane’s June 2021 speech. Stefan Ingves, until recently Governor of the Riksbank, provides another example. SUERF Policy Brief 1507 summarizes his remarks at a recent SUERF event as follows: His...

In his Financial Times Free Lunch column, Martin Sandbu discusses our recent Barcelona report (with Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, and Xavier Vives). He writes: “The introduction is as good a guide to the main policy issues as I have seen. In particular, it helpfully directs our focus not so much to the technical possibilities digitisation brings as to what they mean for who is empowered and enriched by the systemic changes that can follow…” Martin continues: “It gives a nuanced...

CEPR eBook, with Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, Xavier Vives. 2 June 2026. PDF, HTML. Column: New Coins on the Block: Digital Currencies and the Financial System (with Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, and Xavier Vives). VoxEU, June 2, 2026. HTML. The crypto system is no longer a sideshow. Dollar stablecoins now put dollar claims into circulation well beyond the regulated US banking perimeter, and cryptoisation is beginning to transform the international monetary and financial system. This...

CEPR webinar, April 2026. Youtube. With a legislative vote on the digital euro approaching, the debate around its design and implications is entering a critical phase. This webinar will take stock of where the current proposal stands, unpacking key features, open questions, and points of contention. Join us to better understand what is at stake as Europe moves closer to a potential digital currency rollout. Join our panel of speakers – Isabelle Mateos y Lago (BNP Paribas), Lucrezia...

With Alistair Milne and David Skeie. CEPR Discussion Paper 21448, May 2026. PDF. We assess retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) against the objective of the uniformity of money. The central questions that arise are whether CBDC could help support the uniformity of money across public and private monies in day-to-day payments; how it interacts with the unit of account and monetary sovereignty; and how its design choices impact its contribution.

Central Banking, March 25, 2026. HTML. Interview text: 1. A number of central banks are currently working on introducing retail CBDC. In your view, what are the risks they most frequently overlook? One risk is losing sight of the bigger picture. Retail CBDC is not merely a technological innovation that may or may not help respond efficiently to structural change in the payment system. It can also serve as a tool for broader reform of the monetary architecture. The overarching objective...

VoxEU, March 6, 2026. HTML. Ultimately, the macroeconomic significance of CBDC is shaped by policy choices, and political economy determines whether CBDC becomes a significant factor. To understand CBDC policy, don’t just think macro — think political economy.

CEPR Discussion Paper 21141, February 2026. 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,...

CEPR eBook, 12 November 2025. PDF, HTML.

CEPR eBook, 12 November 2025. PDF, HTML. VoxEU column: Frontiers of Digital Finance: A Global Perspective. HTML. VoxEU column: Frontiers of Digital Finance: Stablecoins, monetary ‘singleness’, tokenisation, and decentralised finance. HTML. My introduction to/summary of the book: The digitisation of payment, trading, and settlement systems is reshaping the financial architecture. New technologies are transforming how value is created, stored, transferred, and accounted for, altering the...