Besser ohne Bargeld? Gesamtwirtschaftliche Wohlfahrtsverluste der Bargeldabschaffung

Doing away with cash? The macroeconomic welfare costs of abolishing cash

Gerhard Rösl, Franz Seitz and Karl-Heinz Tödter

No 58, Weidener Diskussionspapiere from University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden (OTH)

Abstract: To broaden the operational scope of monetary policy, several authors suggest cash abolishment as an appropriate means of breaking through the zero lower bound. The key question in this respect is: What are the costs of such a proposal? We argue that the welfare costs of bypassing the zero lower bound can be dealt with analytically and empirically by assuming negative interest rates on cash holdings. Adopting a money-in-the-utility-function (MIU) model, we measure the welfare loss in terms of the amount needed to compensate consumers (compensated variation), and as excess burden (deadweight loss) imposed on the economy. Firstly, we gauge the welfare effects of abolishing cash, both, for the Euro area and for Germany, and we perform several robustness checks. Secondly, we broaden the analysis by taking into account the liquidity services of assets included in the monetary aggregates M1 and M3, and we contrast the results for the year 2015 with those for the pre-crisis period 2005. Our findings suggest that the welfare losses of negative interest rates incurred by consumers and society are large, notably if implemented in a low interest rate environment. Imposing a negative interest rate of 3 percent on cash holdings and reducing the interest on all assets included in M3 creates a deadweight loss of € 62bn for euro area and of €18bn for Germany. The annual compensation required by consumers in the euro area as well as in Germany is equivalent to 2.2 percent of GDP or about €700 per capita. Thus, stepping into deep negative interest rates turns out to be a very costly economic experiment, leaving aside the potential risks and negative side effects of protracted and intensified unconventional monetary policy.

Keywords: zero lower bound; cash abolishment; negative interest rates; welfare loss; compensated variation; deadweight loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E41 E58 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/157752/1/885739744.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Besser ohne Bargeld? Gesamtwirtschaftliche Wohlfahrtsverluste der Bargeldabschaffung (2017)
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:zbw:hawdps:58

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Weidener Diskussionspapiere from University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden (OTH)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().