中央银行独立性、收入不平等与通货膨胀--来自中国的实证检验

本文就中国人民银行独立性、收入不平等对通货膨胀的影响机制进行了分析探讨.我们引入中央银行目标函数,对中央银行独立性、收入不平等与通货膨胀间的作用机制进行了模型推理分析.而后我们整合了转型国家中央银行独立性的测度方法,并用此方法对中国人民银行的独立性进行了详细测定.最后,通过计量分析检验了以下结论:收入不平等是引致通货膨胀的一个经验性因素;中央银行独立性越强,越能有效抑制收入不平等引起的通货膨胀.     

中央银行独立性、责任性与通货膨胀目标制

近年来不少学者提出,我国货币政策应转向通货膨胀目标制。我国现行的政策实际上正是一种隐性的通货膨胀目标制,20世纪90年代以来所发生的几次通货膨胀偏倚很大程度上是由于央行的独立性不够。鉴于通货膨胀目标制并不能解决当前我国货币政策调控中的问题并可能带来更多的问题,今后货币政策改革应坚持由直接调控向间接调控、由数量型调控向价格型调控的转变思路,在提高央行独立性的同时,增强其责任性并提高货币政策的透明度。     

中央银行的独立性与通货膨胀--基于货币政策时间非一致性的一个理论分析

基于对历史上中央银行独立性与通货膨胀之间关系的考察,在分析货币政策的时间非一致性基础上,认为中央银行的独立性跟通货膨胀之间没有必然联系;通货膨胀大小受中央银行对其偏好的影响。     

中央银行独立性与货币政策有效性

货币本位制的确立和二战后各国经济的发展,使得货币政策的重要性日益增强,相应地中央银行独立性问题也引起了广泛的争论。这是因为各国经济发展的实践表明,中央银行能否有效地制定和执行货币政策,保持货币稳定,在很大程度上取决于中央银行的独立性。     

论中央银行的独立性

中央银行是以实现整个经济为特定目标而非利润最大化的、负责货币政策的政府机构。中央银行的独立性可以表现为两种形式：形式上的独立性与实质上的独立性。美联储可以放弃形式上的独立性成为政府的一部分,但保留实质上的独立性,使其能够置身于党派政治之外。     

浅论我国中央银行独立性

在世界金融危机的大背景下,研究我国中央银行的独立性具有重要的现实意义.本文从中央银行独立性的基本理论出发,重点分析了我国中央银行独立性的现状,并对如何完善中央银行独立性提出了建议.     

关于我国中央银行独立性与宏观经济表现的实证分析

本文对1984年中国人民银行正式行使中央银行职能至今20年的分析,探讨在我国CBI与通货膨胀率和GDP增长率之间的关系。通过回归分析,发现我国的数据支持已有的结论:1995年人民银行规范之前,存在CBI过低与通货膨胀率过高的现象;而1995年之后,CBI提高对应着较低的通胀率;1984-2001年的经济增长并没有表现出与CBI之间的明显关系。历史数据显示,我国的中央银行独立性过度受到政府干预,造成物价和经济激烈波动;但是随着金融体制改革的深入,中央银行的独立性在逐步提高,货币政策的效力也在增强。     

Debt,inflation and central bank independence

Increasing the independence of a central bank from political influence, although ex-ante socially beneficial and initially successful in reducing inflation, would ultimately fail to lower inflation permanently. The smaller anticipated policy distortions implemented by a more independent central bank would induce the fiscal authority to decrease current distortions by increasing the deficit. Over time, inflation would increase to accommodate a higher public debt. By contrast, imposing a strict inflation target would lower inflation permanently and insulate the primary deficit from political distortions.     

Inequality, inflation, and central bank independence

What can account for the different contemporaneous inflation experiences of various countries, and of the same country over time? We present an analysis of the determination of inflation from a political economy perspective. We document a positive correlation between income inequality and inflation and then present a theory of the determination of inflation outcomes in democratic societies that illustrates how greater inequality leads to greater inflation, owing to a desire by voters for wealth redistribution. We conclude by showing that democracies with more independent central banks tend to have better inflation outcomes for a given degree of inequality. JEL Classification E5, H0 Inégalité, inflation et l'indépendance de la banque centrale. Quels sont les facteurs qui pourraient expliquer les expériences inflationnistes tellement différentes des divers pays dans le passé récent, et l'expérience tellement différente d'un pays donné dans le temps? Les auteurs analysent ce problème de la détermination du taux d'inflation dans une perspective d'économie politique. Ils déterminent qu'il y a une corrélation positive entre l'inégalité et l'inflation, et présentent une théorie de la détermination de l'inflation dans les sociétés démocratiques qui montre comment une inégalité plus grande entraîne une inflation plus grande à cause du désir des électeurs de demander une redistribution de la richesse. Le mémoire montre en terminant que les démocraties e´quipées de banques centrales plus indépendantes tendent à avoir de meilleurs résultats en terme d'inflation pour un degré d'inégalité donné.     

Reconsidering central bank independence

In this paper, we survey the case for central bank independence (CBI). We conclude that CBI is neither necessary nor sufficient for monetary stability. CBI is just one potentially useful monetary policy design instrument among several, and CBI should not be treated as an exogenous variable. Instead, the question that should be addressed is why societies decide to make their central banks independent? The reasons why CBI is chosen are related to legal, political, and economic systems. A number of empirical studies find correlations between CBI and low inflation rates. Endogeneity of CBI suggests, however, that the correlation has no implications for causality.     

Political influence,central bank independence and inflation in Africa: A comparative analysis

This paper develops a new de facto measure of central bank independence (CBI) based on two recent measures of the turnover rates of central bank governors introduced by Vuletin and Zhu (2011), complemented with measures of alliance with the government in power, captured by prior executive appointment, tribe proximity, and political party affiliation. Using 1980–2009 data from 13 countries from the CFA zone (a currency union) and 18 non-CFA countries, the new index is used to 1) examine whether CBI can help achieve price stability in Africa and 2) show how CBI affects African countries that are part of a monetary union. We find that higher turnover rates lead to higher inflation. Our results are robust to the decomposition of the turnover rates into premature removals and ally replacements. Furthermore, we find that for CFA zone countries, central bank autonomy has no effect on inflation and instead inflation is driven by other variables such as the fixed exchange rate regime or commodity price shocks.     

Formal targets, central bank independence and inflation dynamics in the UK: A Markov-Switching approach

We examine inflation and uncertainty in the UK with a version of the Markov Switching model, which allows for changes in the variance as well as in the mean and persistence of a series. We find that the UK’s attempts at exchange rate pegs in the form of shadowing the deutschmark and entering the ERM were ineffective, and in the latter case counterproductive in lowering inflation uncertainty. The 1981 budget, however, greatly lowered uncertainty, and the adoption of a formal inflation target also had a palpable, negative impact on inflation uncertainty. As a suggestive exercise, we examine inflation uncertainty in the US, and find that, over 2005–2008, in the absence of an inflation target, uncertainty rose in the US, while uncertainty remained low in the UK over this period of rising commodity prices and financial turmoil.     

IMF conditionality and central bank independence

This paper studies the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in promoting central bank independence (CBI). While anecdotal evidence suggests that the IMF has been playing a vital role for CBI, the underlying mechanisms of this influence are not well understood. We argue that the IMF has ulterior motives when pressing countries for increased CBI. First, IMF loans are primarily transferred to local monetary authorities. Thus, enhancing CBI aims to insulate central banks from political interference to shield loan disbursements from government abuse. Second, several loan conditionality clauses imply a substantial transfer of political leverage over economic policy making to monetary authorities. As a result, the IMF through pushing for CBI seeks to establish a politically insulated veto player to promote its economic policy reform agenda. We argue that the IMF achieves these aims through targeted lending conditions. We hypothesize that the inclusion of these loan conditions leads to greater CBI. To test our hypothesis, we use a recently available dataset on IMF programs that includes detailed information on CBI reforms and IMF conditionality for up to 124 countries between 1980 and 2012. Our findings indicate that targeted loan conditionality plays a critical role in promoting CBI. These results are robust towards varying modeling assumptions and withstand a battery of robustness checks.     

Central bank independence,inflation and political instability in developing countries

We test whether political instability affects central bank independence in developing countries. Both a legal measure and the turnover tate of central bank governors are used as proxies for central bank independence and the frequency of government transfers is used to proxy political instability. Only the number of coups affects the turnover rate of central bank governors. We also find that both the turnover rate of central bank governors and political instability affect the rate of inflation.     

On the nonlinear relationship between inflation and economic growth

Using a large panel data set from both developed and developing economies and employing the PSTR and dynamic GMM techniques, this study highlights two aspects of the inflation–growth relationship. First, it analyzes the nonlinearity of the relationship and identifies several thresholds for the global sample and for various income-specific sub-samples. Second, it identifies some country-based macroeconomic features that influence this nonlinearity. Our empirical results substantiate both views and validate the fact that inflation–growth nonlinearity is sensitive to a country׳s level of financial development, capital accumulation, trade openness and government expenditures. Moreover, these country-specific characteristics result in some marked differences in this nonlinear relationship.     

Reflections on the current fashion for central bank independence

This paper challenges the time-inconsistency case for centralbank independence. It argues that the time-inconsistency literaturenot only seriously confuses the substance of the rules vs discretiondebate, but also posits an implausible view of monetary policy.Most worryingly, the inflationary bias featured prominentlyin the time-inconsistency literature has encouraged the developmentof a dangerously one-sided approach to central bank independencewhich entirely ignores the potential risks involved in maximisingcentral bankers' latitude for discretion. The analysis showsthat a more balanced and symmetric approach to central bankindependence is urgently needed. The views of Maynard Keynesand Milton Friedman are shown to shed some illuminating anddisconcerting light on a fashionable free-lunch promise thatis based on rather shallow theoretical foundations and empiricalevidence.