Ezinne Favour Ogwuegbu
Title: The Role of External Pressures and Internal Capacity in Explaining Diverging Implementation Patterns in Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Projects
Supervisor: Dr. Egert Juuse
Opponent: Dr. Jaanus Müür
Defense: 9 June 2025
Abstract: CBDCs are emerging as a digital alternative to physical cash, acting as direct liabilities of the central bank. They can be used to enhance financial inclusion, market efficiency, amongst others. This study posits that a central bank's decision to implement a CBDC and its specific design features are driven by a combination of external influences and internal conditions. Using a combination of process tracing and qualitative comparative analysis to examine variations in use case, technology, data management, and distribution systems, the study investigated how external pressures (regulatory, mimetic, normative) and internal conditions (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity) influence different CBDC design choices. It identified four patterns in the use case (wholesale or retail), technology (token-based or account-based), data management (centralized, decentralized, or hybrid), and distribution (direct or two-tiered) design systems adopted by the CBDC projects of The Bahamas, Jamaica, Nigeria, Brazil, China, and Sweden corresponding to differences in the combination of external pressures and internal conditions in each case.
Keywords: CBDC design, implementation patterns, external pressures, internal conditions
