Electronic Money: The Powerpoint File
UPDATE January 10, 2018: My presentation "Breaking Through the Zero Lower Bound" has evolved into a pair of presentations "21 Misconceptions about Eliminating the Zero Lower Bound (or Any Effective Lower Bound on Interest Rates)" and "Implementing Deep Negative Interest Rates: A Guide." The links are the latest versions of the presentations, as I gave them at Boston University on November 16, 2018.
Videos:
For more on this topic (including a 5-minute interview), see my bibliographical post “How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide.”
Other than presentations at the University of Michigan, where I worked for 29 years, and the University of Colorado Boulder, where I am now, here is a list of places I have or am scheduled to give these presentations or closely related presentations:
Bank of England, May 20, 2013
Bank of Japan, June 18, 2013
Keio University, June 21, 2013
Japan’s Ministry of Finance, June 24, 2013
University of Copenhagen, September 5, 2013
National Bank of Denmark, September 6, 2013
Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), September 10, 2013
Paris School of Economics, September 12, 2013
Banque de France, September 13, 2013
Federal Reserve Board, November 1, 2013
US Treasury, May 19, 2014
European Central Bank, July 7, 2014
Bundesbank, July 8, 2014
Bank of Italy, July 11, 2014
Swiss National Bank, July 15, 2014
Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory Conference in Tokyo, August 20, 2014
Princeton University, October 13, 2014
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, October 15, 2014
New York University, October 17, 2014
European University Institute (Florence), October 29, 2014
Qatar Central Bank and Texas A&M University at Qatar joint seminar, November 17, 2014
International Monetary Fund, May 4, 2015
London conference on “Removing the Zero Lower Bound on Interest Rates” sponsored by the Imperial College Business School, the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the Swiss National Bank, panel on Economics, Financial, Legal and Practical Issues, May 18, 2015
Bank of England: Keynote Address for “Chief Economists’ Workshop– The Future of Money,” May 19, 2015
Bank of Finland, May 20, 2015
Sveriges Riksbank, May 21, 2015
Uppsala University, May 25, 2015
Norges Bank, May 28, 2015
Bank of Canada, June 11, 2015
Reserve Bank of New Zealand, July 22, 2015
New Zealand Treasury, August 5, 2015
Lake Forest University, September 1, 2015
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, September 3, 2015
American Economic Association Meetings, San Francisco, January 4, 2016
IMF, European Section, June 3, 2016
Brookings Institution, Hutchins Center Conference, June 6, 2016
St. Louis Fed Conference, September 23, 2016
Bank of Japan, September 27, 2016
Bank of Thailand, September 29, 2016
Bank Indonesia, October 3, 2016
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, October 5, 2016
Bank of Korea, October 6, 2016
Bank of Japan, October 7, 2016
Minneapolis Fed Conference, October 18-19, 2016
Sveriges Riksbank (Stockholm), October 31-November 1, 2016
Austrian National Bank November 2-4, 2016
Bank of Israel, November 6-7, 2016
Brussels Conference on “What is the impact of negative interest rates on Europe’s financial system? How do we get back?” sponsored by the European Capital Markets and Institute (ECMI), the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis, November 9, 2016
Czech National Bank, November 10-11, 2016
European Central Bank, November 14-16, 2016
Bank of International Settlements, November 17, 2016
Swiss National Bank, November 18, 2016
Kansas City Fed, December 20, 2016
Bank of Canada/Central Bank Research Association Conference, July 20, 2017
Denver Association of Business Economists, August 16, 2017
De Nederlandsche Bank (Amsterdam), September 28, 2017
Bruegel Conference (Brussels), October 2, 2017
Bank of Spain, October 3-5, 2017
Bank of Portugal, October 9-10, 2017
Harvard University, November 12-13, 2018
Brown University, November 14, 2018
MIT, November 15, 2018
Boston University, November 16, 2018
Bundesbank, October 28, 2020 (virtual)
Reserve Bank of Australia, November 16, 2020 (virtual)
Shandong University, April 15 and September 22, 2024 (virtual)
(If you want to know more about the personal side of these trips, see my post “Electronic Money: The Travelogue.”)
Below is what I had to say in two early entries in this post that went beyond simply giving the itinerary of my worldwide, multi-year “Breaking Through the Zero Lower Bound” tour:
June 17, 2013: I went to the Bank of England to talk about how to eliminate the zero lower bound back in May. Tomorrow I will give this presentation (download) at the Bank of Japan:
I think my online readers will also find it interesting. It includes arguments that I have not made online yet in any detail.
The associated paper is very preliminary (in particular, it has very long quotations about the history of thought that need to be cut down to size, and needs to be revised along the lines of the Powerpoint file), but here is the current draft of the paper “Breaking Through the Zero Lower Bound” (download).
Update, June 29, 2013: My electronic money presentations on June 18 at the Bank of Japan, June 21 at Keio University and June 24 at Japan’s Ministry of Finance were well-received. The fact of my seminar makes the part of the International Herald Tribune’s summary of Leika Kihara’s (gated) article “Japan policy appears set, like it or not” that I have italicized false:
The central bank is said to have no new stimulus plan in the works, nor is it pondering alternative measures.
Though I argue in my presentation that an electronic yen policy is superior to the massive quantitative easing that I advocated for Japan on June 29, 2012, because an electronic yen allows monetary policy to steer the economy without inflation, some version of an electronic yen is also the plausible fall-back policy if massive quantitative easing does not work.
For the record, the type of quantitative easing I advocated for Japan involved massive purchases of corporate stocks and bonds–“assets chosen to have nominal interest rates as far as possible above zero.” Purchases of corporate stocks and bonds should be much more powerful than purchases of Japanese government bonds. Though the Bank of Japan has the legal authority to purchases corporate stocks and bonds, there is a concern (perhaps misplaced) about the possible consequences of the risk for the Bank of Japan’s net worth. An alternative would be for Japan to push further in increasing the risky asset holdings in the Government Pension Investment Fund. That would be in line with what I write in my column “Why the US Needs Its Own Sovereign Wealth Fund.”