IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/0605.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The macroeconomics of central bank issued digital currencies

Author

Listed:
  • Barrdear, John

    (Bank of England)

  • Kumhof, Michael

    (Bank of England)

Abstract

We study the macroeconomic consequences of issuing central bank digital currency (CBDC) — a universally accessible and interest-bearing central bank liability, implemented via distributed ledgers, that competes with bank deposits as medium of exchange. In a DSGE model calibrated to match the pre-crisis United States, we find that CBDC issuance of 30% of GDP, against government bonds, could permanently raise GDP by as much as 3%, due to reductions in real interest rates, distortionary taxes, and monetary transaction costs. Countercyclical CBDC price or quantity rules, as a second monetary policy instrument, could substantially improve the central bank’s ability to stabilise the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Barrdear, John & Kumhof, Michael, 2016. "The macroeconomics of central bank issued digital currencies," Bank of England working papers 605, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:0605
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2016/the-macroeconomics-of-central-bank-issued-digital-currencies.pdf?la=en&hash=341B602838707E5D6FC26884588C912A721B1DC1
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2003. "Closing small open economy models," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 163-185, October.
    2. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under sticky prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 198-230, February.
    3. Ioan Carabenciov & Charles Freedman & Mr. Roberto Garcia-Saltos & Mr. Douglas Laxton & Mr. Ondrej Kamenik & Mr. Petar Manchev, 2013. "GPM6: The Global Projection Model with 6 Regions," IMF Working Papers 2013/087, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Gary Gorton & Stefan Lewellen & Andrew Metrick, 2012. "The Safe-Asset Share," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 101-106, May.
    5. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Sanches, Daniel, 2019. "Can currency competition work?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-15.
    6. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under imperfect competition," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 183-209, June.
    7. Christopher J. Erceg & Luca Guerrieri & Christopher Gust, 2006. "SIGMA: A New Open Economy Model for Policy Analysis," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(1), March.
    8. Brock, William A., 1975. "A simple perfect foresight monetary model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 133-150, April.
    9. William Poole, 1969. "Optimal choice of monetary policy instruments in a simple stochastic macro model," Special Studies Papers 2, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Ruchir Agarwal & Miles Kimball, 2015. "Breaking Through the Zero Lower Bound," IMF Working Papers 2015/224, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Douglas W. Diamond & Philip H. Dybvig, 2000. "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Win), pages 14-23.
    12. Mr. Michael Kumhof & Mr. Jaromir Benes, 2012. "The Chicago Plan Revisited," IMF Working Papers 2012/202, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Ball, Laurence, 2001. "Another look at long-run money demand," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 31-44, February.
    14. Lagos, Ricardo & Wright, Randall, 2003. "Dynamics, cycles, and sunspot equilibria in 'genuinely dynamic, fundamentally disaggregative' models of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 156-171, April.
    15. Thomas Laubach, 2009. "New Evidence on the Interest Rate Effects of Budget Deficits and Debt," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(4), pages 858-885, June.
    16. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
    17. Ireland, Peter N., 2001. "Sticky-price models of the business cycle: Specification and stability," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 3-18, February.
    18. McLeay, Michael & Radia, Amar & Thomas, Ryland, 2014. "Money in the modern economy: an introduction," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 54(1), pages 4-13.
    19. William Poole, 1970. "Optimal Choice of Monetary Policy Instruments in a Simple Stochastic Macro Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(2), pages 197-216.
    20. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    21. Goodfriend, Marvin & McCallum, Bennett T., 2007. "Banking and interest rates in monetary policy analysis: A quantitative exploration," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 1480-1507, July.
    22. Peter Hördahl & Michael R King, 2008. "Developments in repo markets during the financial turmoil," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    23. Fish, Tom & Whymark , Roy, 2015. "How has cash usage evolved in recent decades? What might drive demand in the future?," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 55(3), pages 216-227.
    24. Eric M. Engen & R. Glenn Hubbard, 2005. "Federal Government Debt and Interest Rates," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2004, Volume 19, pages 83-160, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. R. Glenn Hubbard & Eric M. Engen, 2004. "Federal Government Debt and Interest Rates," AEI Economics Working Papers 50018, American Enterprise Institute.
    26. Ali, Robleh & Barrdear, John & Clews, Roger & Southgate, James, 2014. "Innovations in payment technologies and the emergence of digital currencies," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 54(3), pages 262-275.
    27. Joseph Farrell, 1987. "Cheap Talk, Coordination, and Entry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(1), pages 34-39, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Barrdear, John & Kumhof, Michael, 2022. "The macroeconomics of central bank digital currencies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    2. Andrej Sokol & Michael Kumhof & Marco Pinchetti & Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, 2023. "CBDC policies in open economies," BIS Working Papers 1086, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Jakab, Zoltan & Kumhof, Michael, 2018. "Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds — facts, theory and evidence," Bank of England working papers 761, Bank of England, revised 17 Jan 2020.
    4. Jakab, Zoltan & Kumhof, Michael, 2015. "Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds – and why this matters," Bank of England working papers 529, Bank of England.
    5. Mr. Michael Kumhof & Mr. Jaromir Benes, 2012. "The Chicago Plan Revisited," IMF Working Papers 2012/202, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Ludger Linnemann & Andreas Schabert, 2010. "Debt Nonneutrality, Policy Interactions, And Macroeconomic Stability," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 51(2), pages 461-474, May.
    7. Kumhof, Michael & Laxton, Douglas, 2013. "Fiscal deficits and current account deficits," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 2062-2082.
    8. Kumhof, Michael & Sokol, Andrej & Rungcharoenkitkul, Phurichai, 2020. "How Does International Capital Flow?," CEPR Discussion Papers 15526, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Cesa-Bianchi, Ambrogio & Kumhof, Michael & Sokol, Andrej & Thwaites, Gregory, 2019. "Towards a new monetary theory of exchange rate determination," Bank of England working papers 817, Bank of England.
    10. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Mathias Trabandt, 2018. "On DSGE Models," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 113-140, Summer.
    11. Robert Amano & Malik Shukayev, 2012. "Risk Premium Shocks and the Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(8), pages 1475-1505, December.
    12. Bayer, Christian & Born, Benjamin & Luetticke, Ralph, 2023. "The liquidity channel of fiscal policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 86-117.
    13. Michael Kumhof & Douglas Laxton, 2010. "Chile’s Structural Fiscal Surplus Rule: a Model-Based Evaluation," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 13(3), pages 5-32, December.
    14. Freedman, Charles & Kumhof, Michael & Laxton, Douglas & Muir, Dirk & Mursula, Susanna, 2010. "Global effects of fiscal stimulus during the crisis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 506-526, July.
    15. Kumhof, Michael & Wang, Xuan, 2021. "Banks, money, and the zero lower bound on deposit rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    16. Philip Arestis & Alexander Mihailov, 2011. "Classifying Monetary Economics: Fields And Methods From Past To Future," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 769-800, September.
    17. Mr. Douglas Laxton & Mr. Michael Kumhof, 2007. "A Party without a Hangover? On the Effects of U.S. Government Deficits," IMF Working Papers 2007/202, International Monetary Fund.
    18. Dib, Ali, 2006. "Nominal rigidities and monetary policy in Canada," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 303-325, June.
    19. Ikeda, Daisuke, 2015. "Optimal inflation rates with the trending relative price of investment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 20-33.
    20. Lama, Ruy & Medina, Juan Pablo, 2020. "Mundell meets Poole: Managing capital flows with multiple instruments in emerging economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Distributed ledgers; blockchain; banks; financial intermediation; bank lending; money creation; money demand; endogenous money; countercyclical policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:boe:boeewp:0605. 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: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.html .

    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.