IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jbkreg/v23y2022i1d10.1057_s41261-021-00162-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“Economically inefficient and legally untenable”: constitutional limitations on the introduction of central bank digital currencies in the EU

Author

Listed:
  • Jay Cullen

    (University of York
    University of Oslo)

Abstract

ECB officials have recently poured scorn on the notion that the ECB could introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the Eurozone, with one labelling such an initiative as “economically inefficient and legally untenable.” This article assesses the justifications for these claims from legal and economic perspectives. It finds that, based upon prevailing ECB policies and the myriad options available for CBDC design, such claims are flawed. The article further explains that the ECB’s reticence to consider the introduction of CBDC may impair the development of payments systems and obstruct financial inclusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Jay Cullen, 2022. "“Economically inefficient and legally untenable”: constitutional limitations on the introduction of central bank digital currencies in the EU," Journal of Banking Regulation, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 23(1), pages 31-41, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jbkreg:v:23:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41261-021-00162-4
    DOI: 10.1057/s41261-021-00162-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41261-021-00162-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41261-021-00162-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mathias Lé & Sandrine Lecarpentier & Henri Fraisse & Michel Dietsch, 2019. "Lower bank capital requirements as a policy tool to support credit to SMEs: evidence from a policy experiment," Working Papers hal-04141885, HAL.
    2. Breckenfelder, Johannes & De Fiore, Fiorella & Andrade, Philippe & Karadi, Peter & Tristani, Oreste, 2016. "The ECB's asset purchase programme: an early assessment," Working Paper Series 1956, European Central Bank.
    3. Jens van ’t Klooster & Clément Fontan, 2020. "The Myth of Market Neutrality: A Comparative Study of the European Central Bank’s and the Swiss National Bank’s Corporate Security Purchases," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 865-879, September.
    4. Spyros Alogoskoufis & Sam Langfield, 2020. "Regulating the Doom Loop," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 16(4), pages 251-292, September.
    5. Cheun, Samuel & von Köppen-Mertes, Isabel & Weller, Benedict, 2009. "The collateral frameworks of the Eurosystem, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England and the financial market turmoil," Occasional Paper Series 107, European Central Bank.
    6. Abidi, Nordine & Miquel-Flores, Ixart, 2018. "Who benefits from the corporate QE? A regression discontinuity design approach," Working Paper Series 2145, European Central Bank.
    7. Cândida Ferreira, 2013. "Bank market concentration and bank efficiency in the European Union: a panel Granger causality approach," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 365-391, September.
    8. Raphael Auer & Rainer Boehme, 2020. "The technology of retail central bank digital currency," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    9. Habib, Maurizio Michael & Stracca, Livio & Venditti, Fabrizio, 2020. "The fundamentals of safe assets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    10. McLeay, Michael & Radia, Amar & Thomas, Ryland, 2014. "Money creation in the modern economy," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 54(1), pages 14-27.
    11. Bindseil, Ulrich, 2020. "Tiered CBDC and the financial system," Working Paper Series 2351, European Central Bank.
    12. Barrdear, John & Kumhof, Michael, 2016. "The macroeconomics of central bank issued digital currencies," Bank of England working papers 605, Bank of England.
    13. Ricks, Morgan, 2016. "The Money Problem," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226330327, September.
    14. Samuel Cheun & Isabel von Köppen-Mertes & Benedict Weller, 2009. "The collateral frameworks of the Eurosystem, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England and the financial market turmoil," Occasional Paper Series 107, European Central Bank.
    15. David Evans, 2014. "How the Proposed Payments Legislation Will Restrain Competition Among Payment Card Schemes and Harm Consumers in the European Union," Antitrust Chronicle, Competition Policy International, vol. 10.
    16. Philip R. Lane, 2012. "The European Sovereign Debt Crisis," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 49-68, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bhaskar, Ratikant & Hunjra, Ahmed Imran & Bansal, Shashank & Pandey, Dharen Kumar, 2022. "Central Bank Digital Currencies: Agendas for future research," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van 't Klooster, Jens & van Tilburg, Rens, 2020. "Targeting a sustainable recovery with Green TLTROs," SocArXiv 2bx8h, Center for Open Science.
    2. Dirk Niepelt, 2020. "Monetary Policy with Reserves and CBDC: Optimality, Equivalence, and Politics," Working Papers 20.05, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    3. Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Mehl, Arnaud & Stracca, Livio, 2022. "Central bank digital currency in an open economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 54-68.
    4. Chen, Hongyi & Siklos, Pierre L., 2022. "Central bank digital currency: A review and some macro-financial implications," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    5. Ariah Klages-Mundt & Dominik Harz & Lewis Gudgeon & Jun-You Liu & Andreea Minca, 2020. "Stablecoins 2.0: Economic Foundations and Risk-based Models," Papers 2006.12388, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    6. Tomura, Hajime, 2018. "Payment instruments and collateral in the interbank payment system," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 82-104.
    7. Hoang, Yen Hai & Ngo, Vu Minh & Bich Vu, Ngoc, 2023. "Central bank digital currency: A systematic literature review using text mining approach," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    8. J. Barthélemy & V. Bignon & B. Nguyen, 2018. "Monetary Policy and Collateral Constraints since the European Debt Crisis," Working papers 669, Banque de France.
    9. Gersbach, Hans & Böser, Florian, 2020. "Monetary Policy with a Central Bank Digital Currency: The Short and the Long Term," CEPR Discussion Papers 15322, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Nyborg, Kjell G., 2017. "Central bank collateral frameworks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 198-214.
    11. Carlos Viñuela & Juan Sapena & Gonzalo Wandosell, 2020. "The Future of Money and the Central Bank Digital Currency Dilemma," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-22, November.
    12. Josep Ferret Mas & Alexander Mihailov, 2021. "Green Quantitative Easing as Intergenerational Climate Justice: On Political Theory and Pareto Efficiency in Reversing Now Human-Caused Environmental Damage," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2021-16, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    13. Eun Young Oh & Shuonan Zhang, 2022. "Informal economy and central bank digital currency," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(4), pages 1520-1539, October.
    14. Nyborg, Kjell G., 2017. "Reprint of: Central bank collateral frameworks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 232-248.
    15. Albertazzi, Ugo & Becker, Bo & Boucinha, Miguel, 2021. "Portfolio rebalancing and the transmission of large-scale asset purchase programs: Evidence from the Euro area," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    16. M. Vari, 2014. "Implementing monetary policy in a fragmented monetary union," Working papers 529, Banque de France.
    17. Dietrich Domanski & Richhild Moessner & William R. Nelson, 2014. "Central banks as lender of last resort: experiences during the 2007-2010 crisis and lessons for the future," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-110, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Assen Slim, 2022. "MDBC e-hryvnia: Zentralbankgeld in Planung [The e-Hryvnia CBDC: a Central Bank Currency in Project]," Post-Print hal-03937410, HAL.
    19. Jakob Eberl & Christopher Weber, 2014. "ECB Collateral Criteria: A Narrative Database 2001–2013," ifo Working Paper Series 174, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    20. Sascha Buetzer, 2022. "Advancing the Monetary Policy Toolkit through Outright Transfers," IMF Working Papers 2022/087, International Monetary Fund.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jbkreg:v:23:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41261-021-00162-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.