This paper analyzes the legal foundations of central bank digital currency (CBDC) under central bank and monetary law. Absent strong legal foundations, the issuance of CBDC poses legal, financial and reputational risks for central banks. While the appropriate design of the legal framework will...

Not since the Great Depression have monetary policy matters and institutions weighed so heavily in commercial, financial, and political arenas. Apart from the eurozone crisis and global monetary policy issues, for nearly two years all else has counted for little more than noise on a relative...

One of the main contributions of Modern Money Theory (MMT) has been to explain why monetarily sovereign governments have a very flexible policy space that is unconstrained by hard financial limits. Not only can they issue their own currency to pay public debt denominated in their own currency,...

This paper argues that the loose monetary policy of two of the world’s most important financial institutions-the US Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank-were ultimately responsible for the outburst of global financial crisis of 2008 - 09. Unusually low interest rates in 2001 -...

This paper analyses the issue of the dynamics of the TARGET2 system balances during the sovereign debt crisis, when some countries registered a decisive inflow of the central bank liquidity and others showed an outflow. The dynamics in the TARGET2 are here explained as being due to a fall in the...

This paper explains the European debt crisis not as a result of insufficient fiscal discipline but as the result of a constructional flaw of the EMU. The reason for this flaw are the diverging real interest rates in EMU countries, which trigger self-reinforcing debt-spirals in the presence of...

To reinforce the long-term sustainability of public finances, the South African National Treasury has proposed a set of fiscal guidelines informed by three principles, namely: a counter-cyclical fiscal stance, long-term debt sustainability and inter-generational equity. Owing to the sound...

This paper focuses on the interactions between public debt policy and foreign exchange reserve management. We found that, although foreign currency debt issuance can contribute significantly to the growth of foreign exchange reserves, it can cause serious difficulties in the assessment of...

Over the past decade, prudent fiscal management has served Thailand well in cushioning the impact of the global financial turbulence. However, going forward, fiscal risks which include a weakened global economic outlook, unbalanced fiscal structure and growing contingent liabilities may have...

In this paper bank bailout rules and central bank independence (CBI) are determined by majority voting. The failure of a bank is socially costly, since bailouts are financed by distortionary taxation. The tax distortion can be reduced via monetization, i.e. lowering CBI; but monetization causes...