Over millennia, mankind has used hard cash in various forms ranging from shells to gold coins and paper. More recently, cash has become unpopular in political circles, as it effectively restricts states’ power to tax (explicitly or via negative interest rates) or to survey and potentially...

This paper uses cross-country firm-level data to explore the impact of U.S. monetary policy shocks on firms' sales, investment, and employment. We estimate a sizeable impact of U.S. monetary policy on the average foreign firm, while controlling for other macroeconomic and financial variables...

The National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia (NBRNM) is implementing advanced transparency practices. The long-standing commitment to transparency noted by a number of stakeholders and forcefully re-affirmed in the recent period is well anchored in the law, and it has been designated by...

This paper studies the implications of money laundering for the optimal design of central bank digital currency (CBDC). I build a general equilibrium framework to explicitly allow money laundering by agents and income audits by a government. I find that as long as CBDC offers less anonymity than...

Chapter 1: Introduction and overview -- Chapter 2: Fiat money: History and features -- Chapter 3: Financial Technology sectors and business models -- Chapter 4: Cryptocurrency -- Chapter 5: Central bank digital currency -- Chapter 6: Neobanks -- Chapter 7: Digital currencies’ implications for...