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.     

Central Bankers and Central Bank Independence

This paper uses results of a questionnaire survey to look at how central bankers inthe Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia view various criteria of centralbank independence and compares their responses with central bankers in industrialcountries. Central bankers from both groups agree very strongly on the importanceof two pillars of central bank independence: goal independence and freedom toimplement these goals, together with a system of how credit is granted by a centralbank to a government that gives the central bank powers to determine terms andlimits the extent of such credit. Based on the responses, the paper also identifiessome weaknesses of the most frequently used indices of central bank independenceand makes recommendations on how to improve them.     

Central Bank Independence and the Cost of Disinflation: Why the Wage Contracts Length Matters?

Recent empirical contributions demonstrate that countries with less independent central banks enjoy lower output losses during disinflationary cycles. To explain these somewhat surprising empirical findings, some authors suggest that independent central banks probably face a flatter short-run Phillips curve. In this paper, we provide both theoretical and empirical arguments to rationalize this intuition. We demonstrate that, since central bank independence reduces the mean inflation rate and its variance, wage setters opt for a lower degree of nominal wage indexation leading to more wage and price inertia and, thus, to a flatter short-run Phillips curve. Consequently, this paper put forward a channel of positive influence of central bank independence on the sacrifice ratio through its impact on nominal wage indexation. Empirical tests, performed using a sample of 19 OECD countries during the 1960–1990 period, show that these theoretical results hold also empirically.     

央行沟通与通货膨胀预期

通过合理政策有效引导通货膨胀预期对当前中国经济具有重要现实意义.本文用自回归分布滞后模型和EGARCH模型捕捉央行沟通对通胀预期及其波动的影响.实证结果表明:央行沟通传递的货币政策信息被市场有效捕捉和解读,实现了通胀预期管理目的,增加沟通频率能有效降低通胀预期波动;但央行的言行偏离加剧了短期通胀预期波动,降低了央行沟通和货币政策操作的实际效果;通胀预期存在分布厚尾性和右偏斜,市场出现极端预期的概率较大,且更倾向于预期通胀上升,通胀预期波动的群聚特性表明其具有阶段性自我强化特征.研究结论为央行沟通的有效性提供了实证支撑,揭示出的通胀预期分布特征对提高央行预期管理措施的针对性具有参考价值.     

产权、金融稳定政策与中央银行独立性

本文从产权角度出发,建立中央银行和金融机构的微观行为模型,通过分析和考察理论模型和现实情况,认为在中国当前金融稳定政策的框架下,由于中央银行与微观金融机构事实上的产权关系,其货币稳定和金融稳定职能均受制于微观金融机构,独立性受到损害.为了保持中央银行的独立性,必须切断其与微观金融机构的产权关系.     

Central Bank Independence in Transition Economies

The paper discusses recent changes in central bank laws and the relationship between inflation and central bank independence in transition economies. Two indices of legal independence are constructed, covering political and economic aspects of independence. Most of the countries experienced high-inflation episodes in the recent past and changes introduced to the laws after, or simultaneously, with stabilization programmes strengthened the position of the central banks. In further analysis, an inverse relationship emerges between inflation and indices of central bank independence. However, the robust relationship is present only at a high level of economic liberalization. This conclusion is supported by results from regressions on time-aggregated and panel data, even after controlling for the government fiscal position and the absence/presence of an IMF stabilization package.     

Self-fulfilling Currency Crises and Central Bank Independence

We develop a model of a fixed exchange rate peg arrangement derived from the Barro–Gordon model of rules versus discretion. It is shown that the fixed peg is vulnerable to self-fulfilling currency crises in which the unemployment rate increases, the credibility of the rule decreases, but, paradoxically, the reputation of the policy-maker improves. Delegating monetary policy to an independent central banker does not prevent this type of crisis from arising, and can even make it more costly.
JEL Classification: F 3; F 4     

Central Bank Independence and Private Investment in the Developing World

We argue that central bank independence (CBI) can raise private investment through signalling commitment to reform and suggest that such an effect might be larger in democracies where CBI can also limit populist access to economic policy-making. Random effects regressions on private investment behavior in a sample of 20 developing countries support these hypotheses.     

On Central Bank Independence and the Stability of Policy Targets

It is argued that impediments to the establishment of an independent central bank arise in the presence of unstable policy targets. Changing policy targets may occur with an office-motivated policymaker. This differs from politico-economic models where targets change depending on the partisanship of the politicians in office. In the model the principal faces a tradeoff between the credibility benefits of an independent central bank and the flexibility to pursue shifts in his policy targets allowed by a regime of policy discretion. An empirical section addresses the issue of the correlation between central bank independence and the stability of policy targets.     

Transparency of Central Bank Preferences

Abstract. In this paper, we examine whether the transparency of the central bank's preferences is desirable. We make two major points. First, in the literature on preference transparency variance-reduction frameworks are often adopted. As a consequence a change in the degree of transparency affects the magnitude of information asymmetries, but at the same time it implies a rather arbitrary effect on the distribution of preferences. We present a clean framework without this problem. Second, using a very general specification of shocks to the central bank's preferences, we show that society prefers transparency if it sufficiently values the employment target, whereas it prefers opacity if it estimates inflation as sufficiently important.     

中央银行的独立性--基于邮政储蓄及农发行视角的分析

关于邮政储蓄和农业政策性银行的改革是近年来饱受争议的一个话题,因为其既涉及中央财政,又涉及中央银行;而以往学者的讨论要么局限于邮政储蓄,要么局限于农业政策性银行,均有失全面。为此,本文通过剖析中央银行在邮政储蓄恢复及发展历程中功能的转换,评析目前流行的改革方案,试图构建一个能够实现多赢并确保中央银行独立性的改革模式。     

Inflation, unemployment, and the time consistency of the US monetary policy

This paper verifies the performance of the Barro and Gordon (1983) model to explain the US inflation since the early 1950s. We divide the period from 1951:2 to 2010:2 according to each chairman of the Federal Reserve (FED). In addition, we consider aggregated periods, represented by pre-Volcker, Volcker-Greenspan, Greenspan-Bernanke, and whole sample. A genetic algorithm of stochastic search is applied to reduce the sensitivity of the maximum likelihood estimator to the initial parameter values. Surprisingly, our results show that the time consistency problem explains the US inflation during the Greenspan chairmanship at the FED.     

中央银行独立性与货币、金融稳定政策协调

当今,金融危机给经济发展带来了极大的危害,为此,金融稳定是当务之急.审视中国的金融现状,我们必须加强金融体系各组成部分内部及其相互之问的有效风险配置、资源配置等核心功能,将中央银行独立性、货币稳定政策及金融稳定政策纳入统一框架之下,有效协调货币、金融稳定政策,提高金融机构风险管理水平.     

Spillover Dynamics of Central Bank Interventions

Abstract. Central banks frequently intervene in foreign exchange markets to reduce volatility or to correct misalignments. Such operations may be successful if they drive away destabilizing speculators. However, the speculators do not simply vanish but may reappear on other foreign exchange markets. Using a model in which traders are able to switch between foreign exchange markets, we demonstrate that while a central bank indeed has several means at hand to stabilize a specific market, the variability of the other markets depends on how the interventions are implemented.     

Using Taylor Rules to Understand European Central Bank Monetary Policy

Abstract. Over the last decade, the simple instrument policy rule developed by Taylor has become a popular tool for evaluating the monetary policy of central banks. As an extensive empirical analysis of the European Central Bank's (ECB) past behaviour still seems to be in its infancy, we estimate several instrument policy reaction functions for the ECB to shed some light on actual monetary policy in the euro area under the presidency of Wim Duisenberg and answer questions like whether the ECB has actually followed a stabilizing or a destabilizing rule so far. Looking at contemporaneous Taylor rules, the evidence presented suggests that the ECB is accommodating changes in inflation and hence follows a destabilizing policy. However, this impression seems to be largely due to the lack of a forward-looking perspective in such specifications. Either assuming rational expectations and using a forward-looking specification, or using expectations as derived from surveys result in Taylor rules that do imply a stabilizing role of the ECB. The use of real-time industrial production data does not seem to play such a significant role as in the case of the United States.