Raphael Auer, Rainer Böhme
Central banks across the world are starting to experiment with digital currencies. A 2021 BIS Survey of central banks “has found that 86% are actively researching the potential for CBDCs, 60% were experimenting with the technology and 14% were deploying pilot projects” (BIS 2021). Just last year, the Bahamas became the first country to introduce a CBDC nationwide (the sand dollar) and in April, the Eastern Caribbean became the first currency union central bank to issue digital cash.
1 Overall, the BIS reports that at least 46 central banks are currently actively designing or planning for the possible introduction of digital currencies (Auer et al. 2020). This year, the Bank of England and the Treasury announced the joint creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Taskforce to explore a potential UK CBDC.
Charles Goodhart, Manoj Pradhan
Over the past year, concerns about inflation have reappeared. The January 2021 Centre for Macroeconomics (CfM) survey asked members of its UK-based panel whether inflationary or deflationary pressures would dominate in the upcoming decade and about the main driving forces of inflation.
Should we worry about post-Covid inflation?
Since the Global Crisis, inflation expectations have been subdued in most advanced economies. Central banks have made herculean efforts to hit their inflation targets from below. The consensus prior to Covid-19 was certainly that high rates of inflation would not be a major threat to advanced economies in the foreseeable future.