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Fedaccounts: Digital Dollars, Morgan Ricks, J. Crawford, L. Menand

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We are entering a new monetary era. Central banks around the world- spurred by the development of privately controlled digital currencies as well as competition from other central banks-have been studying, building, and, in some cases, issuing central bank digital currency ("CBDC").

Although digital fiat currency is one of the hottest topics in macroeconomics and central banking today, the discussion has largely over- looked the most straightforward and appealing strategy for implementing a U.S. dollar-based CBDC: expanding access to bank accounts that the Federal Reserve already offers to a small, favored set of clients. These accounts consist of entries in …