Irving Fisher’s classic treatise, The Purchasing Power of Money: Its Determination and Relation to Credit, Interest and Crises (1911), still offers valuable insights regarding monetary reform. This post examines some of Fisher’s insights and draws some lessons for Fed policy. The Importance of Stable Money Fisher recognized…
After a successful inaugural offering in 2018, the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute is pleased to announce that Alternative Money University – our 3-day academic workshop for students interested in monetary economics – is coming back in July 2019. As followers of…
Some prominent economists have begun to analyze formally the market for a privately issued outside money that they associate with Bitcoin. Rodney Garratt and Neil Wallace (2018) (ungated version here) model the relative values of (exchange rates between) “Bitcoin 1” and other hypothetical cryptoassets (“Bitcoin 2,” etc.)….
Among many other advantages it enjoys when it comes to influencing the course of monetary reform, the Fed has that of being able to shift the constraints that determine whether a proposed reform is or isn't possible. If existing constraints don't stand in the way of some…
Various proposals for “central bank digital currency” (CBDC) have been under discussion for several years now. The central bank of Ecuador launched a digital currency in 2015 — and shut down the failed project three years later. A number of economists have addressed the topic. What is…