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...

On 16th November 2009, SUERF, CEPS and the Belgian Financial Forum coorganized a conference "Crisis management at cross-roads" in Brussels. All papers in the present volume are based on contributions at the conference and the SUERF Annual Lecture which followed the event.

This paper provides a chronology of the main financial events over the last 15 years, spanning three main crises. The first is the global financial crisis in 2008-09, and the second is the euro area sovereign debt crisis in 2010-12. Both events heralded significant reforms of the EU's governance...

This paper shows the existence of a central bank trilemma. When a central bank is involved in financial intermediation, either directly through a central bank digital currency (CBDC) or indirectly through other policy instruments, it can only achieve at most two of three objectives: a socially...