Bank Indonesia Governor Examines Theses of Two FEB UI’s Economics Undergraduate Students
Nino Eka Putra ~ FEB UI Public Relations Officer
DEPOK, 10/07/2020 – Two students of the Undergraduate Studies in Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Indonesia, Class of 2016, Muhammad Yusuf Mujiburrahman (1606893595) and Cinta Sonia Cahyani (1606862646), defended their theses online on Friday (10/7/2020).
The thesis defence was chaired by Dr. Beta Yulianita Gitaharie, Acting Dean of FEB UI, with Perry Warjiyo, Ph.D., Governor of Bank Indonesia, and tehsis supervisor Febrio Nathan Kacaribu, Ph.D., Head of the Fiscal Policy Agency and lecturer at FEB UI, as examiners.
Muhammad Yusuf Mujiburrahman was the first of the two students to defend his thesis, which was entitled DSGE Model for a Retail Central Bank Digital Currency System. This study aimed to compare the ability of central banks to control inflation without resorting to the retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) scheme.
The motivation and background of this study was a decline in the cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP in several countries. This means that there has been a switch in the means of payment used for transactions, from cash to electronic money. The second is due to the increasing demand for cryptocurrency. In fact, cryptocurrency as a currency issued by the private sector poses a threat to central banks in intervening in the economy through conventional monetary policies.
Using the DSGE model, the study found that central banks need to revise their policy interest rates to return inflation to its steady state. This means that CBCD makes the economy more responsive to central bank policies. This is because central banks now has a new instrument, the CBDC interest rate, which targets the monetary assets of the public. Therefore, there is an indication that this new instrument is effective as a complement to central banks’ policy rate to control inflation.
Cinta Sonia Cahyani, the second student, defended her thesis entitled DSGE Model for a Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency System. Increasingly complex economic activities require a faster flow of money or liquidity. Economic liquidity is determined by how healthy the banking system is, which is supported by the adoption of payment system technology. In the case of interbank transactions or “wholesale payment”, the clearing and settlement processes are handled directly under the authority of central banks.
The technology adopted by central banks to process wholesale transactions is the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system. The technology enables real-time clearing and settlement of interbank transfers using bank account balances at the central banks (reserve). However, the system currently in use still has several shortcomings, namely transaction fees, large bank supervision fees for these transactions, and limited operating hours.
Central banks’ upgrading of the payment infrastructure through the adoption of wholesale CBDC that uses Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) makes it possible to process transactions quickly without the help of third parties. DLT technology has the potential to reduce transaction costs and risks involved in transactions on the interbank money market through the smart-contract feature that allows money market activities to be carried out using specific asset as collateral. By looking at the potential of CBDC application, this study aimed to examine and measure the impact of CBDC implementation in the wholesale scheme on efficiency in the interbank money market and the effectiveness of monetary policies.
The simulations conducted using the DGSE Model approach found that the application of CBDC helped central banks reduce costs in conducting Open Market Operations. Meanwhile, in the interbank money market, the CBDC system succeeded in inreasing the efficiency of market operations thanks to lower transaction costs and risks. Increased efficiency in the interbank money market resulted in a smaller spread between market interest rates and policy rates so that the application of the CBDC system increased monetary policy effectiveness. (hjtp)
(lem)
