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Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) give rise to many possibilities including those of negative interest rates. A two-period decision model is presented between one central bank and one representative household. The central bank applies the Taylor (1993) rule to choose its interest rate. The household allocates its resources strategically to production, consumption, CBDC holding, and non-CBDC holding. The results are determined analytically and illustrated numerically by varying 19 parameter values. Interesting novelties of the article are that the central bank may choose negative CBDC interest rates when the household holds far more CBDC than non-CBDC, for low inflation rates, low real interest rates, low household’s potential production, low weight assigned to inflation in the Taylor (1993) rule, high target inflation rate, and high household’s production parameter. That usually causes the household to decrease its CBDC holding and increase its non-CBDC holding, production and consumption. The central bank may increase its CBDC interest rate to compete with an increasing non-CBDC interest rate if the household’s transaction efficiencies for CBDC and non-CBDC increase, or the household’s transaction efficiency for consumption decreases. Shocks to production, inflation and interest rates are analyzed.

In a two-period decision model, a central bank chooses a CBDC (central bank digital currency) interest rate and a representative household allocates resources into production, consumption, CBDC holding, and non-CBDC holding. The model’s analytical results and a plausible benchmark are compared with the empirics for the US, China and Russia. Interesting novelties of the article are that the model predicts that the US in 2021/2022 should choose  rather than 0.125% CBDC interest to combat its high October 2021 empirical inflation of 6.2%. That would induce households to hold more CBDC, hold less non-CBDC, and produce and consume less. In contrast, the model predicts that China should choose a low  rather than  CBDC interest rate. That would decrease each household’s CBDC holding and increase the low inflation. The model predicts that Russia should choose  rather than  CBDC interest rate. Russia’s strategy is remarkably consistent with the model’s predictions. The model predicts that the central bank should choose negative CBDC interest rate when the inflation and real interest rate are low, and the inflation target is high. The article shows how extremely high inflation, which increases the CBDC interest rate, makes production and consumption nearly impossible, unless the real interest rate is extremely negative.