In prior research, we documented evidence suggesting that digital payment adoptions have accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While digitalization of payment activity improves data utilization by firms, it can also infringe upon consumers’ right to privacy. Drawing from a recent paper, this blog post explains how payment data acquired by firms impacts market structure and consumer welfare. Then, we discuss the implications of introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that offers consumers a low-cost, privacy-preserving electronic means of payment—essentially, digital cash.
What’s new?
Monetizing Privacy, with Michael Lee (FRBNY Staff Reports)
Estimating Policy Functions in Payments Systems using Deep Reinforcement Learning, with P. S. Castro, A Desai, H. Du and F. Rivadeneyra (Best Paper Award, NeurIPS 2020)
Monetizing Privacy with Central Bank Digital Currencies, with M. Lee (Liberty Street Economics)
COVID-19 and the Search for Digital Alternatives to Cash, with M. Lee and A. Plesset (Liberty Street Economics)
Token- or Account-Based? A digital currency Can be Both, with Michael Lee, Brendan Malone and Antoine Martin (Liberty Street Economics)
Why Fixed Costs Matter for Proof-of-Work Based Cryptocurrencies with Maarten van Oordt (Best Cryptoeconomics Paper,The Third Toronto Fintech Conference 2020)
Investigating the Impact of Global Stablecoins (I am one of many contributors to this report.)
The Economics of Distributed Ledger Technologies for Securities Settlement with E. Benos and P. Gurrola-Perez (Ledger Journal)
Who Sees the Trades? The Effect of Information on Liquidity in Inter-Dealer Markets with Michael Lee, Antoine Martin and Robert Townsend
An Application of Shapley Value Cost Allocation to Liquidity Savings Mechanisms
Privacy as a Public Good: A Case for Electronic Cash with Maarten van Oordt
Entrepreneurial Incentives and the Role of Initial Coin Offerings with Maarten van Oordt
Nonlinear Pricing and the Market for Settling Payments with Adam Copeland (Journal of Money, Credit and Banking)
Bitcoin 1, Bitcoin 2, … : An Experiment in Privately Issued Outside Monies with Neil Wallace (Economic Inquiry)
A Proposal for a Decentralized Liquidity Savings Mechanism with Side Payments with Adam Furgal, Dave Hudson and Zhiling Guo (R3 Report)
Centralized Netting in Financial Networks with Peter Zimmerman (Journal of Banking & Finance)
Project Jasper: A Canadian Experiment with Distributed Ledger Technology for Domestic Interbank Payments Settlement (I am one of many contributors to this white paper that elaborates on the BoC FSR article.)
Central Bank Cryptocurrencies with Morten Bech (BIS Quarterly Review)
Project Jasper: Are Distributed Wholesale Payment Systems Feasible Yet? with J. Chapman, S. Hendry, A. McCormack and W. McMahon (Bank of Canada Financial System Review)
CAD-coin versus Fedcoin (R3 Report)