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.     

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.     

Time-inconsistency and expansionary business cycle theories: What does matter for the central bank independence–inflation relationship?

Since the seminal paper of Kydland and Prescott (1977), a central bank’s independence (CBI) has been considered an important institutional condition for achieving lower inflation. Recently, however, this long-held belief has been challenged. This paper investigates the relationship between CBI and inflation for a large sample (91 countries) covering the period from 1990 to 2014. We follow the previous literature by considering differences across national monetary regimes in explaining this relationship. Our approach also traces the sources of the inflationary phenomenon. Using panel data and the turnover indicator as a proxy for CBI, we offer two main findings. First, we identify the role of exchange rate regimes in the dynamic between inflation and CBI. Second, our results show that only intermediate and flexible exchange rate regimes are appropriate in this relationship. This finding is explained by the level of CBI, which is very low for countries with a fixed exchange rate policy and low income levels. For policymakers, our results highlight the importance of the choice of monetary regime in controlling inflation in the presence of CBI. For public agents, our results provide guidelines for formulating expectations.     

Central bank independence,fiscal deficits and currency union: Lessons from Africa

Can central bank independence (CBI) help to reduce fiscal balances? In this paper, we answer this question using novel measures of CBI based on the turnover rate of central bank governors (TOR) and the Garriga measure of legal independence for 30 African countries for the period 1990–2017. Our novel measures of CBI capture the degree of alliance between the fiscal authority and the monetary authority which can potentially lead to debt monetization and higher fiscal balances. Thus, we classify central bank governor changes into ally changes or non-ally changes; in addition to that, we decompose our full sample into CFA zone countries and non-CFA zone countries to capture the effect of currency union membership. Our results show that for CFA zone countries, central bank autonomy, when proxied by the turnover rate of central bank governors, is associated with a decrease in fiscal balances and replacing a central banker with a non-ally, is negatively and significantly associated with fiscal balances.     

The political economy of IMF conditionality and central bank independence

International organizations (IOs) often drive policy change in member countries. Given IOs' limited political leverage over a member country, previous research argues that IOs rely on a combination of hard pressures (i.e., conditionality) and soft pressures (i.e., socialization) to attain their political goals. Expanding this literature, we hypothesize that IOs can enhance their political leverage through loan conditions aimed at enhancing the political independence of key administrative units. Studying this mechanism in the context of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we argue that through prescribing structural loan conditions on central banks (CBI conditionality), the IMF empowers central banks to gain more political leverage with the aim to limit a government's ability to (ab)use monetary policy for political gain. Divorcing monetary authorities from their respective government, the IMF intends to alter political dynamics towards achieving greater program compliance and enhance long-term macro-financial stability. Relying on a dataset including up to 124 countries between 1980 and 2012, we find that the IMF deploys CBI conditionality to countries with fewer checks and balances, a less independent central bank, and where the government relies more heavily on the monetization of public debt.     

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.     

The effect of political volatility on capital markets in EU accession and neighborhood countries

Political instability has the potential to disrupt financial markets. But how do political institutions affect financial movements in an environment where all institutions are in flux? This paper looks at the effects of formal and informal political volatility in the new EU countries of central and eastern Europe, in the Eastern Neighborhood, and farther afield in Central Asia to answer this question. Using asymmetric GARCH modeling on monthly data, I find that informal political volatility has a significant negative effect on stock returns, while formal political institutions generate much higher financial volatility than changes in monetary policy.     

关于中国人民银行独立性的研究--来自独立性指数和政策反应函数的证据

本文的目的在于 :(1 )根据GMT和CWN的方法 ,将中国人民银行有关法律指数化 ,并通过独立性指数的纵向和跨国家比较来分析中国人民银行在法律层面上的独立性变化和独立性程度 ;(2 )构建中国人民银行政策反应函数 (policyreactionfunction) ,并通过政策工具变量 (instrumentvariables)和政治事件虚拟变量 (dummyvariables)的变化来反映中国人民银行的实际独立性。     

Still puzzling: evaluating the price puzzle in an empirically identified structural vector autoregression

The price puzzle, an increase in the price level associated with a contractionary monetary shock, is investigated in a rich, 12-variable SVAR in which various factors that have been mooted as solutions are considered jointly. SVARs for the pre-1980 and post-1990 periods are identified empirically using a graph-theoretic causal search algorithm combined with formal tests of the implied overidentifying restrictions. In this SVAR, the pre-1980 price puzzle depends on the characterization of monetary policy, and the post-1990 price puzzle is statistically insignificant. Commonly suggested theoretical resolutions to the price puzzle are shown to have causal implications inconsistent with the data.     

The benefits of central bank's political independence

We consider a two-tier model of monetary policy where the central banker is both subject to the explicit influence of elected political principals through contracts and the implicit influence of interest groups willing to capture monetary policy. We analyze the impact of granting independence to the central banker on the scope for capture and the agency costs of delegating the monetary policy to a central banker. Political independence increases those agency costs but significantly stabilizes the politically induced fluctuations of inflation and improves ex ante social welfare.     

Inflation targeting and the need for a new central banking framework

This article critically analyzes inflation targeting (IT) both theoretically and empirically. IT came into prominence in the 1990s and 1 central bank after another adopted this regime in the 1990s and 2000s. Proponents of IT mainly argued that IT regime was successful on the grounds that it resulted in lower inflation rates and hence better economic performances. However, inflation rates in the world were in a downward trend from the 1980s well into the 2000s, and both IT and non-IT regimes managed to decrease their inflation rates. In addition, focusing too much on price stability through IT paved the way for permanently higher than necessary interest rates and disinflationary “tight” monetary policy periods when inflation rate was above an arbitrarily targeted level. Tight monetary policy can and do affect the real economy negatively and overemphasizing price stability may hurt the economy in terms of lower potential output, decreasing investment and more unequal income distribution. Post Keynesians offer valuable alternatives within the framework of parking-it approach to the existing monetary policy paradigm. Our main conclusion is that central banks should set the policy interest rate as low as possible and keep it there, in line with Keynesian “cheap money” policy.     

Interaction of formal and informal financial markets in quasi-emerging market economies

The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the interaction of formal and informal financial markets and their impact on economic activity in quasi-emerging market economies. Using a four-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with asymmetric information in the formal financial sector, we come up with three fundamental findings. First, we demonstrate that formal and informal financial sector loans are complementary in the aggregate, suggesting that an increase in the use of formal financial sector credit creates additional productive capacity that requires more informal financial sector credit to maintain equilibrium. Second, it is shown that interest rates in the formal and informal financial sectors do not always change together in the same direction. We demonstrate that in some instances, interest rates in the two sectors change in diametrically opposed directions with the implication that the informal financial sector may frustrate monetary policy, the extent of which depends on the size of the informal financial sector. Thus, the larger the size of the informal financial sector the lower the likely impact of monetary policy on economic activity. Third, the model shows that the risk factor (probability of success) for both high and low risk borrowers plays an important role in determining the magnitude by which macroeconomic indicators respond to shocks.     

非正规金融与正规金融:互补还是替代?——基于DSGE模型的相互作用机制研究

文章通过建立四部门动态随机一般均衡模型,分析了二元金融体系下正规金融与非正规金融部门之间的作用机制,并对模型进行数值模拟。研究发现,在居民消费偏好冲击和技术冲击两种情况下,正规金融与非正规金融部门之间主要是互补关系,表现为两部门贷款利率和贷款规模的同向变动;而在货币政策冲击下,两部门短期内呈现相互替代的关系。     

Strategic Interactions of Monetary Policymakers and Wage/Price Bargainers: A Review with Implications for the European Common-Currency Area

This paper reviews recent work on macroeconomic management with varying organization of wage/price bargaining and degrees of credible monetary conservatism. The emerging literature synthesizes and extends theory and empirics on central bank independence (CBI) and coordinated wage/price bargaining (CWB), arguing that the degrees of CBI and CWB interact with each other and with other political-economic conditions (sectoral composition, international exposure, etc.) to structure the incentives facing actors involved in monetary policy and wage/price bargaining. The core implication, theoretically surprising but empirically supported, is that even perfectly credible monetary conservatism has long-run, equilibrium, on-average real effects, even with fully rational expectations, and that these effects depend on the organization of wage/price bargaining. Conversely, wage/price-bargaining structure has real effects that depend on the degree of credible conservatism reflected in monetary-policy rules. Each also has interactive nominal effects though this is less surprising. Some disagreement remains over the precise nature of these interactive effects, but all emerging theory and evidence agree that a common, credibly conservative European monetary policy has nominal and real effects that depend on the Europe-wide institutional-structural organization of wage/price bargaining. Indeed, the one specific piece of theoretical and empirical agreement suggests that, for many member countries, the nominal gains from monetary-policy delegation to a credibly conservative European Central Bank will worsen these bargaining-policy interactions.     

渐进资本开放下中国货币政策的独立性

对中国资本流动程度和中国货币政策独立性的回归检验结果表明:中国的经济实践是符合不可能三角命题的。在1980—2003年间,在事实上钉住美元的固定汇率制度下,中国实行着较为严格的资本管制政策和享有独立的货币政策,但货币政策主要依赖于数量调控工具,汇率和利率的价格调控微乎其微,货币政策的独立性受到极大的挑战。     

外汇冲销式干预对中国货币政策独立性的影响研究

冲销干预对中国货币政策独立性的影响表现出长短期不一致的特征,在短期内有助于保持货币政策的独立性;但在长期内,冲销干预不仅会制约货币政策的操作空间,削弱其独立性,累积金融风险,导致恶性后果。对此,应优化央行票据的期限结构,完善以国债市场为核心的公开市场操作,发展外汇掉期交易,建立外汇平准基金制度,增强货币政策独立性。     

Fixed exchange rates,independent central banks and price stability in postcommunist countries: Conservatism and credibility

Central bank independence (CBI) and fixed exchange rates are used by governments to achieve stable prices. This article analyzes the mechanisms through which the two monetary institutions could work: Indirectly via a disciplinary effect on money growth rates or via an additional credibility effect on inflation expectations and the cost of capital. I further explain how both discipline and credibility are affected by the distinct flaws of independent central banks and fixed exchange rates: central banks lack transparency and fixed exchange rates take many shapes and are routinely devalued. The argument is tested with quarterly data from postcommunist countries for years 1991 to 2007. The findings show a strong disciplinary effect of monetary institutions on rates of M2 change and an effect on inflation controlling for money growth, but credibility does not extend to lower real short‐term market interest rates. Political institutions do condition the effect of central bank independence, while the types of fixed exchange rates affect money growth rates and inflation to different degrees.     

On the Future of Inflation Targeting in East Asia

This article analyzes the problems associated with inflation targeting (IT) regimes in a number of East Asian countries. It scrutinizes the policy conflicts that can arise when a central bank that has adopted a formal inflation target to guide the conduct of monetary policy simultaneously manages the exchange rate and pursues financial stability objectives. To this end, it empirically investigates the importance of exchange rate and terms of trade movements as determinants of inflation rates across East Asian economies and discusses the role of central banks in guarding financial stability and the ways this may conflict with an IT regime. The article argues that IT never really has been a suitable monetary framework for East Asian countries and that it should hence be supplanted by transparent monetary frameworks that explicitly recognize the multiple goals that are being pursued by East Asian central banks.     

Perspectives on Australian Retirement Incomes

With important developments over the past two decades in Australian retirement income policy, projected future outcomes—for the public purse, for the national economy and for the future retired—have received considerable attention. This focus on the future should not, however, cause us to lose sight of the present. While the major changes in retirement income policy outcomes will not occur for some decades, the picture for current and recent cohorts of retired people is not static. This article begins with an account of the important policy developments since the 1980s in the Australian retirement income arena—the Australian retirement income system still differs radically from that in most other countries, in relying heavily on a means‐tested income maintenance system, rather than on social insurance. The outcomes for current and recent cohorts of retired people are then examined from two perspectives. The first perspective is an examination of the incomes of the aged in the mid 1990s and of trends over the 1980s and 1990s—including consideration of changes in the level, composition and distribution of aged incomes. The second perspective is an international comparison of the incomes of the aged.     

Informal Credit Markets and the Transmission of Monetary Policy: Evidence from South Korea

This paper is an empirical investigation of the transmission of monetary policy in South Korea. It combines modern mainstream macroeconomics with aspects of a developing economy with financial dualism through a simple IS-LM type model that explicitly incorporates an informal credit market. Vector autoregression analysis, with both semistructural and structural identifications, confirms the importance of a credit variable as a policy tool. The results show direct credit allocation by the central bank had a significant impact on output, prices, and the interest rate in the informal sector. Previous theoretical and empirical findings of "stagflationary" effects of monetary policy are refuted.