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Central Bank Digital Currency: When Price and Bank Stability Collide

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  • Linda Schilling
  • Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
  • Harald Uhlig

Abstract

A central bank digital currency, or CBDC, may provide an attractive alternative to traditional demand deposits held in private banks. When offering CBDC accounts, the central bank needs to confront classic issues of banking: conducting maturity transformation while providing liquidity to private customers who suffer “spending” shocks. We analyze these issues in a nominal version of a Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model, with an additional and exogenous price stability objective for the central bank. While the central bank can always deliver on its nominal obligations, runs can nonetheless occur, manifesting themselves either as excessive real asset liquidation or as a failure to maintain price stability. We demonstrate an impossibility result that we call the CBDC trilemma: of the three goals of efficiency, financial stability (i.e., absence of runs), and price stability, the central bank can achieve at most two.

Suggested Citation

  • Linda Schilling & Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Harald Uhlig, 2020. "Central Bank Digital Currency: When Price and Bank Stability Collide," NBER Working Papers 28237, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28237
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    JEL classification:

    • 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

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