Estimates by the Bundesbank suggest that banknotes worth around €268 billion were in circulation in Germany in 2018. Of that amount, roughly 20% was used directly for transactions. The other, far larger share – somewhere in the region of €200 billion – was being hoarded, i.e. stored for an extended period of time by households and firms.

Konferenzband zur Veranstaltung am 29. Mai 2019

There is a general consensus that distributed ledger technology (DLT) has both disruptive and evolutionary potential for financial markets. This paper focuses on potential implications in connection with collateral management activities for financial transactions, the aim being to analyze the challenges and opportunities of DLT in the current regulatory environment for this specific use case.

In a study prepared together with Professor Friedrich Schneider of the Johannes Kepler University Linz, illegal demand for cash in Germany is investigated. The study presents an overview of economic research on the use of cash in the shadow economy as well as fresh empirical analyses by the authors. They look at the influence of the shadow economy on cash lodgements at Bundesbank branches and the demand for banknotes in Germany.

How much does a cash payment cost? How long does it take? What costs arise at which points? And how do cash payments compare with cashless payments in terms of costs? Answers to these and other questions are provided by this study on the costs of cash payments in the retail sector, contributing to the debate on the efficiency of payments at the point of sale (POS).

The Bundesbank has conducted an analysis of how internal capital adequacy is ensured within the German banking market. The results are generally positive, but most of the institutions still show a need for further structural improvement.

Was kann die Evaluierung der Reformen und neuen Regulierungen für die internationalen Finanzmärkte aus den Erfahrungen anderer Politikbereiche lernen? Darum ging es in einem interdisziplinären Workshop in Halle, den die Bundesbank gemeinsam mit der Nationalen Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina organisiert hatte. Die Ergebnisse des Workshops sind in diesem gemeinsamen Tagungsband von Bundesbank und Leopoldina enthalten.

2017 war ein Meilenstein in der Geschichte der internationalen Bankenregulierung: Obwohl von Einzelnen schon für unmöglich gehalten, haben sich die Mitgliedsländer des Baseler Ausschusses Ende 2017 auf einen Kompromiss für das Reformpaket Basel III geeinigt. Insbesondere die Verhandlungen um die überarbeitete Berechnung der risikogewichteten Aktiva, die bei der Ermittlung der Eigenmittelanforderungen einfließen, waren zwar zäh, aber schlussendlich erfolgreich.

Am 14. Februar 2018 folgten hochrangige Vertreter aus Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft der Einladung zum vierten Bargeldsymposium in Frankfurt am Main, um über das Thema Bargeld zu diskutieren. Das Bargeldsymposium der Deutschen Bundesbank findet als Forum für professionelle Bargeldakteure alle zwei Jahre statt.

This conference once again brought together central bankers and the academic community of cash researchers. It covered a wide range of current topics with renowned experts discussing interesting aspects.