What will the future of money look like? How will digital currencies and new technologies reshape the way we pay and the institutions we rely on? And can regulations designed to make banks safer sometimes have the opposite effect? These are some of the questions explored by Maxi Guennewig, our new CERGE-EI faculty member. Previously a research economist at the European Central Bank, Maxi brings a fresh perspective on some of the most pressing challenges facing our financial systems.In this introductory interview, he shares what sparked his interest in the future of money, discusses surprising findings from his research, and reflects on his move to Prague.

Your research focuses on the future of money and financial institutions. What first sparked your interest in these topics, and what fascinates you about them?

I started studying economics a few years after the 2008 financial crisis, and the European sovereign debt crisis unfolded while I was an undergraduate. Those events probably sparked my broader interest, although at the start of my PhD I didn’t know yet exactly what I wanted to work on.

Then, in 2019, Facebook announced plans to launch its own currency, Libra. That got me thinking about the future of money. Much of the money we use every day is already issued by private institutions: when we pay by card or make a bank transfer, we are using deposits issued by commercial banks. So thinking about the future of money naturally led me to think about the future of financial institutions, too.

Before joining CERGE-EI, you worked as a research economist at the European Central Bank. How did that experience shape the questions you ask as a researcher?

My work at the ECB was actually quite similar to what I do at CERGE-EI, just replacing teaching with policy work but otherwise doing research. But being there was very useful for understanding which questions matter most to central banks as financial technology changes.

A lot of this concerns something quite basic, namely record-keeping: keeping track of who owns what and who has paid whom. Financial institutions are exploring new technologies to maintain these records. Instead of relying on separate computer systems, they can now use a shared record that is kept up to date across a network. Blockchain is one example of such a technology, and many financial institutions are developing systems based on similar ideas.

Central banks are working on how their own money can be used to make payments safely within these new systems. They are also concerned about competition from new forms of private money, such as stable-coins—digital currencies designed to maintain a stable value relative to an established currency. These developments have helped shape the questions I’m now working on about digital central bank money.

You describe yourself as an applied theorist. What does that mean in practice? How do you use economic models to understand real-world problems?

How “applied” my work is probably depends on whom you ask. For me, it means being willing to give up some generality to make progress on concrete, important questions. I’m happy to build a model around a particular problem, even if that means it won’t apply equally well to every other situation.

When Rules Meant to Protect Banks Backfire

One of your recent papers suggests that rules designed to make banks safer can sometimes have the opposite effect. How is that possible, and what should policymakers learn from it?

The paper shows how two policies can interact in ways that undermine the goals of both.

The first is deposit insurance: the government protects bank deposits up to a certain limit, so depositors don’t have to rush to withdraw their money when they become worried about their bank. The second concerns what happens when a bank fails. Following the financial crisis, governments introduced legal powers to impose losses on banks’ shareholders and creditors, with the aim of avoiding rescues paid for by taxpayers.

The difficulty is that banks respond to these policies by changing how they fund themselves. We show that this combination of policies can encourage banks to rely more heavily on deposits that can be withdrawn at short notice, including uninsured deposits. Uninsured depositors have incentives to monitor their bank much more closely than insured depositors do. They therefore withdraw first, which means that losses fall on insured deposits—and hence on the government and therefore us taxpayers.

So policies intended to protect depositors and taxpayers can end up encouraging fragility and leaving the government with losses after all. We see patterns in the data that are consistent with this mechanism.

The broader lesson is that policies need to be considered together. Changing one without adjusting the other can backfire.

Private Money, New Possibilities, and the Road Ahead

In another paper, you explore what happens when companies create their own money. Could private currencies issued by businesses ever work better than traditional money? And what are the risks?

On the one hand, firms have an incentive to issue money that people want to use. If their currency promises to hold its value and perhaps gives customers access to better prices, people will use it more and buy more of the issuing firm’s products. That can be good for both profits and consumers.

“The question of the future of money will certainly stay with me for a while.”

On the other hand, firms and platforms are motivated by profit. An important point is that money is almost always somebody else’s liability. Coins and banknotes are liabilities of the public sector, while the money in your bank account is a debt the bank owes you. The same logic applies to money issued by a platform.

The concern is that platforms may want to go back on their promise of having their currency hold its value, and instead inflate away the value of their liabilities. Since they are motivated by profits, they may have incentives to do so. And this hurts consumers.

What research question or project are you most eager to pursue in the next few years?

I have to finish my existing projects first. But the question of the future of money will certainly stay with me for a while.

What attracted you to CERGE-EI, and what are you most looking forward to in your new role in Prague?

Great colleagues, a great city, a very cool building, a very good salary—and my family and friends aren’t too far away.