For more than two decades now, current-account imbalances are a crucial issue in the international policy debate as they threaten the stability of the world economy. More recently, the government debt crisis of the European Union shows that internal current account imbalances inside a currency...

For more than two decades now, current-account imbalances are a crucial issue in the international policy debate as they threaten the stability of the world economy. More recently, the government debt crisis of the European Union shows that internal current account imbalances inside a currency...

Digital currencies have attracted strong interest in recent years and have the potential to become widely adopted for use in making payments. Public authorities and central banks around the world are closely monitoring developments in digital currencies and studying their implications for the...

We investigate the risks and opportunities to the mandates of central banks arising from fintech developments. Fintech may affect the different areas of responsibility of central banks - mainly monetary policy and financial stability - by changing money demand and by changing the industrial...

We use a simple model to study whether private payment systems based on bank deposits can provide the optimal level of safety. In the model, bank deposits backed by projects are subject to default risk that can be mitigated by a depositor's ex ante and ex post monitoring. Safe payment...