IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v92y1997i1-2p127-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comparison of Three Institutions for Monetary Policy When Central Bankers Have Private Objectives

Author

Listed:
  • Gruner, Hans Peter

Abstract

How do different institutional arrangements for the central bank perform when central bankers have private objectives and society's objectives vary with time? This paper evaluates three benchmark monetary institutions from a constitutional perspective: (i) a contract with an inflation- or monetary target announcement; (ii) an inflation rule, and (iii) the laissez faire policy, i.e., the absence of any contractual arrangement. At the stage of institutional choice there is uncertainty about both society's mean inflation target and the central banker's future inflation target. A target announcement reveals the type of the central banker and solves the credibility vs. flexibility trade-off but it can not prevent that the central banker follows private objectives. The announcement-based contract is the optimal institution if (i) the initial uncertainty about the central banker's objectives is small and (ii) if unemployment is sufficiently high. Copyright 1997 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Gruner, Hans Peter, 1997. "A Comparison of Three Institutions for Monetary Policy When Central Bankers Have Private Objectives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 92(1-2), pages 127-143, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:92:y:1997:i:1-2:p:127-43
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Rogoff, 1985. "The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(4), pages 1169-1189.
    2. C. Hefeker, 1994. "German Monetary Union, the Bundesbank and the EMS collapse," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 47(191), pages 379-398.
    3. Backus, David & Driffill, John, 1985. "Inflation and Reputation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 530-538, June.
    4. Lohmann, Susanne, 1992. "Optimal Commitment in Monetary Policy: Credibility versus Flexibility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 273-286, March.
    5. Canzoneri, Matthew B, 1985. "Monetary Policy Games and the Role of Private Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(5), pages 1056-1070, December.
    6. Barro, Robert J. & Gordon, David B., 1983. "Rules, discretion and reputation in a model of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 101-121.
    7. Fratianni, Michele & von Hagen, Jurgen & Waller, Christopher J, 1997. "Central Banking as a Political Principal-Agent Problem," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 378-393, April.
    8. Hans Grüner & Carsten Hefeker, 1996. "Bank cooperation and banking policy in a monetary union: A political-economy perspective on EMU," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 183-198, July.
    9. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1993. "Designing institutions for monetary stability," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 53-84, December.
    10. Grilli, Vittorio, 1989. "Exchange rates and seigniorage," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(2-3), pages 580-587, March.
    11. Walsh, Carl E, 1995. "Optimal Contracts for Central Bankers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 150-167, March.
    12. Andreas Fischer, 1993. "Inflation Targeting: The New Zealand and Canadian Cases," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 13(1), pages 1-27, Spring/Su.
    13. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haizhou Huang & A. Jorge Padilla, 2002. "Fiscal Policy and the Implementation of the Walsh Contract for Central Bankers," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 3(1), pages 27-42, May.
    2. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    3. Ammer, John & Freeman, Richard T., 1995. "Inflation targeting in the 1990s: The experiences of New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 165-192, May.
    4. Chortareas, Georgios E & Miller, Stephen M, 2003. "Central Banker Contracts, Incomplete Information, and Monetary Policy Surprises: In Search of a Selfish Central Banker?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(3-4), pages 271-295, September.
    5. Francesco Salsano, 2005. "Monetary Policy in the Presence Of Imperfect Observability Of The Objectives Of Central Bankers," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0523, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    6. Huiping Yuan & Stephen M. Miller & Langnan Chen, 2011. "The Optimality And Controllability Of Monetary Policy Through Delegation With Consistent Targets," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 58(1), pages 82-106, February.
    7. Masciandaro, Donato, 2022. "Independence, conservatism, and beyond: Monetary policy, central bank governance and central banker preferences (1981–2021)," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    8. Donato Masciandaro & Davide Romelli, 2019. "Behavioral Monetary Policymaking: Economics, Political Economy and Psychology," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Behavioral Finance The Coming of Age, chapter 9, pages 285-329, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Thierry Warin, 2006. "A Note on Post-Modern Monetary Policy," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0617, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    10. Ratti, Ronald A, 2002. "On Optimal Contracts for Central Bankers and Inflation and Exchange-Rate-Targeting Regimes," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(3), pages 678-685, August.
    11. H.P. Grãœner & C. Hefeker, 1995. "Domestic pressures and the exchange rate regime: why economically bad decisions are politically popular?," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 48(194), pages 331-350.
    12. Clayton, Christopher & Schaab, Andreas, 2022. "A Theory of Dynamic Inflation Targets," TSE Working Papers 22-1389, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    13. Huiping Yuan & Stephen M. Miller, 2006. "The Making of Optimal and Consistent Policy: An Implementation Theory Framework for Monetary Policy," Working papers 2006-06, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2009.
    14. Ugo Panizza, 1997. "Optimal Contracts for Central Bankers: Inflation versus Money Supply and Exchange Rate Targets," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 5-29, January.
    15. McCallum, Bennett T., 1997. "Crucial issues concerning central bank independence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 99-112, June.
    16. Georgios E. Chortareas & Stephen M. Miller, 2003. "Monetary Policy Delegation, Contract Costs and Contract Targets," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 101-112, January.
    17. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1997. "Institutions for Monetary Stability," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 307-334, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Geraats, Petra Maria, 2001. "Precommitment, Transparency and Monetary Policy," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2001,12, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    19. Grüner, Hans Peter, 2002. "Should central banks really be flexible?," Working Paper Series 0188, European Central Bank.
    20. Richard Mash, 2000. "The Time Inconsistency of Monetary Policy with Inflation Persistence," Economics Series Working Papers 15, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:92:y:1997:i:1-2:p:127-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.