In its exploration of the future of money and payments, this course focuses on technology, market competition, and public policy. Money and payments have long been dominated by physical cash and by transfers between deposit accounts of correspondent banks, including central banks. After a grounding in conventional payment systems, the course investigates ongoing improvements and disruptions of conventional approaches with new technologies, including instant payment systems, narrow banking, central bank digital currencies, and cryptographic applications such as blockchain-based digital ledgers, stablecoins, zero-knowledge proofs, smart-contract settlement, and automated market making. Policy concerns include financial inclusion, efficiency, disruption of banking, privacy, anti-money-laundering, financial stability, and monetary policy transmission. Grading is based on frequent short homework assignments and quizzes.
Darrell Duffie
Darrell Duffie is The Adams Distinguished Professor of Management and Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a fellow and member of the Council of the Econometric Society, a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Duffie was the 2009 president of the American Finance Association. In 2014, he chaired the Market Participants Group, charged by the Financial Stability Board with recommending reforms to Libor, Euribor, and other interest rate benchmarks. Duffie’s recent books include How Big Banks Fail, Measuring Corporate Default Risk, and Dark Markets.
