Central Bank Digital Currency and Monetary Architecture

Dirk Niepelt

No 21141, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We review the macroeconomic literature on retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), organizing the discussion around a CBDC-irrelevance result. We identify both fundamental and policy-related sources of relevance, or departures from neutrality. Bank disintermediation — the crowding out of deposits — does not, by itself, constitute such a source. We argue that the literature has primarily focused on policy-related sources of non-neutrality, often without making this focus explicit. From a macroeconomic perspective, CBDC is, at its core, a matter of monetary architecture, and political economy considerations are central to understanding CBDC policy design.

Keywords: Monetary architecture; Central bank digital currency; Private money; Neutrality; Lender of last resort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E42 E51 G21 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21141 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21141

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21141

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().