Tag Archives: Contributions

NZZ, February 1, 2021. PDF. (Title changed by NZZ.) Do negative interest rates render government debt costless? No. What about r<g? I discuss Olivier Blanchard’s presidential address and the conclusions that columnists have drawn. For background: See this post.

VoxEU, January 11, 2021, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. HTML. Based on the CEPR discussion paper, we draw conclusions for the pandemic endgame. We explain why Israel will likely impose a harsher lockdown than other countries, especially poor ones. And why we should expect “inverse lockdowns”—measures to stimulate social interaction.

Writing about CBDC, John Cochrane makes it clear that he is in favor. He links to my work and writes Dirk Niepelt has written a lot about CBDC theory, including reserves for all in 2015, a recent Vox-EU summary and papers,  here with Markus Brunnermeier a JME paper “CBDC coupled with central bank pass-through funding need not imply a credit crunch nor undermine financial stability,” a follow up including “The model implies annual implicit subsidies to U.S. banks of up to 0.8 percent...

Alberto Bisin (Journal of Economic Literature, December 2020) reviews Stephanie Kelton’s “The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy:” Never is its logical structure expressed in a direct, clear way, from head to toe. … Some of these statements are literally correct but used for incorrect or misleading implications—plays on words, effectively. They seem taken directly from the book of tricks of the Greek sophists (the ones Aristophanes makes fun...

Discussion at the 2020 Bank of Canada Annual Economic Conference: The Future of Money and Payments: Implications for Central Banking. PDF.

Dirk Niepelt ist der Direktor des Studienzentrums Gerzensee und Professor für Makroökonomie an der Universität Bern. Hier im Gespräch mit Geldcast-Host Fabio Canetg. swissinfo.ch Swissinfo, December 14, 2020. HTML, podcast. We talk about CBDC, the Swiss National Bank, whether CBDC would render it easier to implement helicopter drops, and how central bank profits should be distributed. Dirk Niepelt ist weltweit einer der führenden Forscher auf dem Gebiet der...

Swissinfo, December 14, 2020. HTML, podcast. We talk about CBDC, the Swiss National Bank, whether CBDC would render it easier to implement helicopter drops, and how central bank profits should be distributed.

CEPR Discussion Paper 15541, December 2020, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF (local copy). We propose a flexible model of infectious dynamics with a single endogenous state variable and economic choices. We characterize equilibrium, optimal outcomes, static and dynamic externalities, and prove the following: (i) A lockdown generically is followed by policies to stimulate activity. (ii) Re-infection risk lowers the activity level chosen by the government early on and, for small static...

Finanz und Wirtschaft, December 9, 2020. PDF. Economic policy is not about GDP growth. It’s about welfare. Externalities are key. Infection externalities don’t go away by calling for responsible behavior. Infection externalities can turn positive. Keeping worthy companies or networks alive does not require government intervention, unless capital markets don’t work. To judge the right amount of burden sharing is beyond economics. But economics gives some clues: In an ideal world,...

The Economist discusses the risk of CBDC-induced bank disintermediation. Their summary of the 2019 paper by Markus Brunnermeier and myself: If people prefer CBDCS, however, the central bank could in effect pass their funds on to banks by lending to them at its policy interest rate. “The issuance of CBDC would simply render the central bank’s implicit lender-of-last-resort guarantee explicit,” wrote Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton University and Dirk Niepelt of Study Centre Gerzensee...