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2. Cryptocurrencies and All That: Two Ideas from Monetary Economics
- Author:
- Jesús Fernández‐Villaverde
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- The monetary arrangements of societies are the result of the interplay of technology and ideas. Technology determines, for example, which coins can be minted and at what cost. For centuries, minting small‐denomination coinage was too costly to induce Western European governments to supply enough small change (Sargent and Velde 2002). Only the arrival of steam‐driven presses fixed this problem (Doty 1998). Simultaneously, ideas about private property and the scope of government determined whether private entrepreneurs were allowed to compete with governments in the supply of small change (Selgin 2008). Technology and ideas about money engage dialectically. Technological advances shape our ideas about money by making new monetary arrangements feasible. Ideas about desirable outcomes direct innovators to develop new technologies.
- Topic:
- Economics, Science and Technology, Monetary Policy, and Cryptocurrencies
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Global Focus
3. Ten Stablecoin Predictions and Their Monetary Policy Implications
- Author:
- Caitlin Long
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Stablecoins are financial obligations issued on a blockchain. They are generally fully collateralized with either fiat currency deposits at a bank, or with short‐term government bonds held at a custodian. They’re issued only by nonbanks, although FINMA in Switzerland does allow Swiss banks to issue Swiss franc–denominated stablecoins. Usually stablecoins do not pay interest, and they are designed to trade at par with the fiat currency. Because they are issued on a blockchain, they usually settle in minutes, with irreversibility, and — critically — they are “programmable,” which means users can build their own software applications to interact with them.
- Topic:
- Monetary Policy, Banks, and Digital Currency
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
4. Should the State or the Market Provide Digital Currency?
- Author:
- Lawrence H. White
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Private commercial banks have been providing trusted money to the public for hundreds of years, in the form of banknotes (where allowed) and transferable deposit balances, as an integral part of their business model. Economically, money balances are a private good: they are rival in consumption (you and I can’t both simultaneously spend a given banknote or deposit balance) and excludable in supply (you and your bank can stop me from spending the funds in your wallet or account) (White 1999: 89). Accordingly, the market does not inherently fail to provide money efficiently.
- Topic:
- Markets, Monetary Policy, Economy, State, Banks, and Digital Currency
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. Technology Development of Digital Currency
- Author:
- Neha Narula
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- We often spend a lot of time talking about the regulatory aspects of what a digital currency might look like, or the economic aspects. But if we take a look at the largest companies, the most influential on our ways of life, they’re tech companies. Technology is incredibly important and influences what we can do with policy and what kinds of functionality we can even enable. So, what I hope to tell you today is a little bit about how I’m seeing the technology development of digital currency.
- Topic:
- Development, Science and Technology, Monetary Policy, and Digital Currency
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. Public and Private Money Can Coexist in the Digital Age
- Author:
- Tobias Adrian and Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli
- Publication Date:
- 06-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- a card, waving a phone, or clicking a mouse. Or we might hand over notes and coins, though in many countries increasingly less often. Today’s world is characterized by a dual monetary system, involving privately issued money — by banks of all types, telecom companies, or specialized payment providers — built upon a foundation of publicly issued money — by central banks. While not perfect, this system offers significant advantages, including innovation and product diversity, mostly provided by the private sector, and stability and efficiency, ensured by the public sector. These objectives — innovation and diversity on the one hand, and stability and efficiency on the other — are related. More of one usually means less of the other. A tradeoff exists that countries — central banks especially — have to navigate. How much of the private sector to rely upon, versus how much to innovate themselves? Much depends on preferences, available technology, and the efficiency of regulation. So it is natural, when a new technology emerges, to ask how today’s dual monetary system will evolve. If digitalized cash — called central bank digital currency — does emerge, will it displace privately issued money or allow it to flourish? The first is always possible, by way of more stringent regulation. We argue that the second remains possible, by extending the logic of today’s dual monetary system. Importantly, central banks should not face a choice between either offering central bank digital currency, or encouraging the private sector to provide its own digital variant. The two can coincide and complement each other — to the extent central banks make certain design choices and refresh their regulatory frameworks.
- Topic:
- Monetary Policy, Banks, Money, Digital Policy, and Digital Currency
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. How the Classical Gold Standard Can Inform Monetary Policy
- Author:
- James A. Dorn
- Publication Date:
- 10-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- atching the frenzy surrounding Judy Shelton’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on February 13, one is led to believe that the gold standard is a “nutty” idea, for which no serious economist or monetary policymaker could possibly have a kind word (see U.S. Senate 2020). This article critiques that wholesale refutation of the gold standard. In recent years (as well as in the past), both serious economists and reputable monetary policymakers have recognized the benefits of a gold standard in reducing regime uncertainty and promoting monetary and social order. Whatever one may think of President Trump’s recent Fed picks, the gold standard itself deserves more respect than it’s been getting.
- Topic:
- Monetary Policy, Federal Reserve, Finance, and Gold Standard
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
8. Perspectives on Balance Sheet and Credit Policies: A Tribute to Marvin Goodfriend
- Author:
- Esther L. George
- Publication Date:
- 10-2020
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Iappreciate this opportunity to pay tribute to Marvin Goodfriend and his many contributions to the theory and practice of monetary policy. At the Kansas City Fed, we knew Marvin as a scholar and a good Federal Reserve colleague. Marvin also was a participant in a number of our Jackson Hole Economic Symposiums. As a Research Officer at the Richmond Fed, he attended the first symposium that we held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1982, where his work on “Discount Window Borrowing, Monetary Control, and the Post‐October 6, 1979 Federal Reserve Operating Procedure” was widely cited.1 Thirty‐four years later in 2016, as a professor at Carnegie Mellon, he presented a paper making the case for deeply negative interest rates as a policy tool that could breach the zero lower bound on nominal rates. He argued that “the zero interest bound encumbrance on monetary policy should be removed so that movements in the intertemporal terms of trade can be reflected fully in interest rate policy to sustain price stability and full employment with a minimum of inefficient and costly alternative policies” (Goodfriend 2016; 128; emphasis added).
- Topic:
- Monetary Policy, Finance, Interest Rates, and Credit
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
9. Some Thoughts on International Monetary Policy Coordination
- Author:
- Charles I. Plosser
- Publication Date:
- 06-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- It is a pleasure to be back here at Cato and to be invited to speak once again at this annual conference. This is one of the premier ongoing monetary policy conferences, and the participants, both at the podium and in the audience, attest to its prominence. This is a session on international monetary arrangements, and there has already been an interesting discussion. I find myself in substantial agreement with the comments of John Taylor, so I do not wish to repeat his points. What I will try to do is put the rules-based approach to international monetary policy coordination in a context that I hope will help us understand some of the past failures so we might avoid them in the future. In many ways, I will simply be reminding us of some principles we all have known for some time, yet which we seem to forget all too frequently.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, Monetary Policy, and Banks
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. The Case for a New International Monetary System
- Author:
- Judy Shelton
- Publication Date:
- 06-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- How often do we hear references to the notion that we live in a rules-based global trading system? Addressing the World Economic Forum at Davos in January 2017, British Prime Minister Theresa May praised liberalism, free trade, and globalization as “the forces that underpin the rules-based international system that is key to our global prosperity and security” (Martin 2017). Chinese President Xi Jinping likewise extolled the virtues of a rules-based economic order at Davos, winning widespread praise for defending free trade and globalization (Fidler, Chen, and Wei 2017). But could someone please explain: What exactly are those rules? Because if we are going to invoke the sentimentality of Bretton Woods by suggesting that the world has remained true to its precepts, we are ignoring geopolitical reality. Moreover, we are denying the warped economic consequences of global trade conducted in the absence of orderly currency arrangements. We have not had a rules-based international monetary system since President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods agreement in August 1971. Today there are compelling reasons—political, economic, and strategic—for President Trump to initiate the establishment of a new international monetary system.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Cooperation, and Monetary Policy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
11. Toward a Rules‐Based International Monetary System
- Author:
- John B. Taylor
- Publication Date:
- 06-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Over the past few years I have been making the case for moving toward a more rules-based international monetary system (e.g., Taylor 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017). In fact, I made the case over 30 years ago in Taylor (1985), and the ideas go back over 30 years before that to Milton Friedman (1953). However, the case for such a system is now much stronger because the monetary system drifted away from a rules-based approach in the past dozen years and, as Paul Volcker (2014) reminds us, the absence of a rulesbased monetary system “has not been a great success.” To bring recent experience to bear on the case, we must recognize that central banks have been using two separate monetary policy instruments in recent years: the policy interest rate and the size of the balance sheet, in which reserve balances play a key role. Any international monetary modeling framework used to assess or to make recommendations about international monetary policy must include both instruments in each country, the policy for changing the instruments, and the effect of these changes on exchange rates. Using such a framework, I show that both policy instruments have deviated from rules-based policy in recent years. I then draw the policy implications for the international monetary system and suggest a way forward to implement the policy.
- Topic:
- International Cooperation, International Trade and Finance, Monetary Policy, and Central Bank
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
12. Rethinking the International Monetary System
- Author:
- John B. Taylor
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In previous articles in the annual monetary issue of the Cato Journal, I drew on historical facts and economic theory to explain the benefits of rules-based monetary policy and why legislation could help the United States reap those benefits (Taylor 2011, 2013a). In this article, I discuss the international aspects of monetary policy, a subject often glossed over in modern debates about rules-based policy, at least compared with discussions about the classic rulesbased gold standard.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Cooperation, and Monetary Policy
- Political Geography:
- North America, Global Focus, and United States of America