IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bis/biswps/1065.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Bank of Amsterdam and the limits of fiat money

Author

Listed:
  • Wilko Bolt
  • Jon Frost
  • Hyun Song Shin
  • Peter Wierts

Abstract

Central banks can operate with negative equity, and many have done so in history without undermining trust in fiat money. However, there are limits. How negative can central bank equity be before fiat money loses credibility? We address this question using a global games approach motivated by the fall of the Bank of Amsterdam (1609–1820). We solve for the unique break point where negative equity and asset illiquidity renders fiat money worthless. We draw lessons on the role of fiscal support and central bank capital in sustaining trust in fiat money.

Suggested Citation

  • Wilko Bolt & Jon Frost & Hyun Song Shin & Peter Wierts, 2023. "The Bank of Amsterdam and the limits of fiat money," BIS Working Papers 1065, Bank for International Settlements.
    • Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:1065
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1065.pdf
    File Function: Full PDF document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1065.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mr. Peter Stella, 1997. "Do Central Banks Need Capital?," IMF Working Papers 1997/083, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Curzio Giannini, 2011. "The Age of Central Banks," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14371.
    3. Edvinsson,Rodney & Jacobson,Tor & Waldenström,Daniel (ed.), 2018. "Sveriges Riksbank and the History of Central Banking," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107193109, September.
    4. Todd Keister & Daniel Sanches, 2023. "Should Central Banks Issue Digital Currency?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(1), pages 404-431.
    5. Fernando E. Alvarez & David Argente & Diana Van Patten, 2022. "Are Cryptocurrencies Currencies? Bitcoin as Legal Tender in El Salvador," NBER Working Papers 29968, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Daniel Sanches & Linda Schilling & Harald Uhlig, 2021. "Central Bank Digital Currency: Central Banking For All?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 41, pages 225-242, July.
    7. Santomero, Anthony M & Seater, John J, 1996. "Alternative Monies and the Demand for Media of Exchange," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(4), pages 942-960, November.
    8. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2000. "Decoupling at the Margin: The Threat to Monetary Policy from the Electronic Revolution in Banking," NBER Working Papers 7955, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Benjamin M. Friedman, 2000. "Decoupling at the Margin: The Threat to Monetary Policy from the Electronic Revolution in Banking," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 261-272, July.
    10. Sims, Christopher A, 1994. "A Simple Model for Study of the Determination of the Price Level and the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(3), pages 381-399.
    11. repec:bla:intfin:v:3:y:2000:i:2:p:261-72 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Carlos, Ann M. & Neal, Larry, 2011. "Amsterdam and London as financial centers in the eighteenth century1," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 21-46, April.
    13. Åke Lönnberg & Mr. Peter Stella, 2008. "Issues in Central Bank Finance and Independence," IMF Working Papers 2008/037, International Monetary Fund.
    14. Stefano Ugolini, 2017. "The Evolution of Central Banking: Theory and History," Palgrave Studies in Economic History, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-48525-0.
    15. Carlos, Ann M. & Neal, Larry, 2011. "Amsterdam and London as financial centers in the eighteenth century," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 38799, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. van Zanden, Jan Luiten & van Leeuwen, Bas, 2012. "Persistent but not consistent: The growth of national income in Holland 1347–1807," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 119-130.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bertsch, Christoph, 2023. "Stablecoins: Adoption and Fragility," Working Paper Series 423, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    2. Xu, Chenzi & Yang, He, 2024. "Real effects of supplying safe private money," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Matteo Bonetti & Dirk Broeders & Damiaan Chen & Daniel Dimitrov, 2024. "Central Bank Capital and Shareholder Relationship," Working Papers 809, DNB.
    4. Tomas Adam & Ales Michl & Michal Skoda, 2023. "Balancing Volatility and Returns in the Czech National Bank's Foreign Exchange Portfolio," Research and Policy Notes 2023/01, Czech National Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jon Frost & Hyun Song Shin & Peter Wierts, 2020. "An early stablecoin? The Bank of Amsterdam and the governance of money," BIS Working Papers 902, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Stephen Quinn & William Roberds, 2016. "Death of a Reserve Currency," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 63-103, December.
    3. David Archer & Paul Moser-Boehm, 2013. "Central bank finances," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 71.
    4. repec:fip:a00001:87606 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Raphael A. Auer & Giulio Cornelli & Jon Frost, 2020. "Rise of the Central Bank Digital Currencies: Drivers, Approaches and Technologies," CESifo Working Paper Series 8655, CESifo.
    6. Lahdenperä, Harri, 2001. "Payment and financial innovation, reserve demand and implementation of monetary policy," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 26/2001, Bank of Finland.
    7. Borgonovo, Emanuele & Caselli, Stefano & Cillo, Alessandra & Masciandaro, Donato & Rabitti, Giovanni, 2021. "Money, privacy, anonymity: What do experiments tell us?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    8. Stephen F. Quinn & William Roberds, 2017. "An Early Experiment with \"Permazero\"," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2017-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    9. Tercero-Lucas, David, 2023. "Central bank digital currencies and financial stability in a modern monetary system," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    10. McCallum, Bennett T. & Nelson, Edward, 2010. "Money and Inflation: Some Critical Issues," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 3, pages 97-153, Elsevier.
    11. Jakob Korbinian Eberl, 2016. "The Collateral Framework of the Eurosystem and Its Fiscal Implications," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 69.
    12. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2001_025 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Cyril Monnet & Hyun Song Shin & Jon Frost & Leonardo Gambacorta & Raphael Auer & Tara Rice, 2022. "Central Bank Digital Currencies: Motives, Economic Implications, and the Research Frontier," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 697-721, August.
    14. Stefano Ugolini, 2018. "The Historical Evolution of Central Banking," Post-Print hal-01887004, HAL.
    15. Korhonen, Tapio, 2001. "Finnish monetary and foreign exchange policy and the changeover to the euro," Research Discussion Papers 25/2001, Bank of Finland.
    16. Bennett T. McCallum, 2003. "Monetary Policy in Economies with Little or No Money," NBER Working Papers 9838, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Charles M. Kahn & Francisco Rivadeneyra & Tsz-Nga Wong, 2018. "Should the Central Bank Issue E-money?," Staff Working Papers 18-58, Bank of Canada.
    18. Claudio Sardoni, 2015. "The functions of money and the demand for liquidity," Working Papers 3/15, Sapienza University of Rome, DISS.
    19. Castrén, Olli & Kavonius, Ilja Kristian & Rancan, Michela, 2022. "Digital currencies in financial networks," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    20. Geoffrey Goodell & Hazem Danny Al-Nakib & Paolo Tasca, 2021. "A Digital Currency Architecture for Privacy and Owner-Custodianship," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-28, May.
    21. Wang, Yi-Ran & Ma, Chao-Qun & Ren, Yi-Shuai, 2022. "A model for CBDC audits based on blockchain technology: Learning from the DCEP," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    22. Maxim Kotsemir & Alexander Abroskin & Dirk Meissner, 2013. "Innovation concepts and typology – an evolutionary discussion," HSE Working papers WP BRP 05/STI/2013, National Research University Higher School of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    central banks; negative equity; fiat money; trust;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:1065. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin Fessler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bisssch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.