IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/psl/bnlaqr/199233.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Case for Central Bank Independence

Author

Listed:
  • Jakob De Haan
  • Jan Egbert Sturm

Abstract

This paper reviews arguments for central bank independence and presents new evidence on the impact of central bank (in)dependence on the level and variability of inflation, money growth, the level and financing of government budget deficits and economic growth, using three different measures of central bank independence. There are indications that countries with an independent central bank experience a lower and more stable inflation rate than countries with a central bank which comes under direct political control. Moreover, central bank credit to government and government budget deficits are lower, while economic growth is not directly affected by central bank independence.

Suggested Citation

  • Jakob De Haan & Jan Egbert Sturm, 1992. "The Case for Central Bank Independence," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 45(182), pages 305-327.
    • Handle: RePEc:psl:bnlaqr:1992:33
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/PSLQuarterlyReview/article/view/10634/10518
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1988. "Political Parties and the Business Cycle in the United States, 1948-1984," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(1), pages 63-82, February.
    2. 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.
    3. Arthur M. Okun, 1971. "The Mirage of Steady Inflation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 2(2), pages 485-498.
    4. Stanley Fischer, 1991. "Growth, Macroeconomics, and Development," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 329-379, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. M. Akbar Akhtar & Howard Howe, 1991. "The political and institutional independence of U.S. monetary policy," Research Paper 9110, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    6. Tabellini, Guido, 1986. "Money, debt and deficits in a dynamic game," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 427-442, December.
    7. Manfred Neumann, 1991. "Precommitment by central bank independence," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 95-112, June.
    8. Engle, Robert F, 1983. "Estimates of the Variance of U.S. Inflation Based upon the ARCH Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 15(3), pages 286-301, August.
    9. Friedman, Milton, 1971. "Government Revenue from Inflation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(4), pages 846-856, July-Aug..
    10. Donato Masciandaro & Guido Tabellini, 1987. "Monetary regimes and fiscal deficits: a comparative analysis," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 125-152.
    11. Fischer, Stanley, 1981. "Towards an understanding of the costs of inflation: II," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 5-41, January.
    12. Cukierman, Alex & Wachtel, Paul, 1979. "Differential Inflationary Expectations and the Variability of the Rate of Inflation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(4), pages 595-609, September.
    13. Evans, Martin, 1991. "Discovering the Link between Inflation Rates and Inflation Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(2), pages 169-184, May.
    14. van der Ploeg, F., 1990. "Budgetary aspects of economic and monetary integration in Europe," Other publications TiSEM 97425e8a-e040-4214-baf3-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Fischer, S., 1991. "Growth, Macroeconomics, and Development," Working papers 580, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    16. Grimes, Arthur, 1991. "The effects of inflation on growth: some international evidence," MPRA Paper 68526, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1987. "The optimal collection of seigniorage : Theory and evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 327-341, September.
    18. Allen, Stuart D, 1986. "The Federal Reserve and the Electoral Cycle: A Note," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 18(1), pages 88-94, February.
    19. Burdekin, Richard C. K. & Wohar, Mark E., 1990. "Monetary institutions, budget deficits and inflation : Empirical results for eight countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 531-551.
    20. Kane, Edward J., 1980. "Politics and Fed policymaking : The more things change the more they remain the same," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 199-211, April.
    21. Giannaros, Demetrios S. & Kolluri, Bharat R., 1985. "Deficit spending, money, and inflation: Some international empirical evidence," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 401-417.
    22. Barnhart, Scott W. & Darrat, Ali F., 1988. "Budget deficits, money growth and causality: Further OECD evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 231-242, June.
    23. Havrilesky, Thomas, 1988. "Monetary Policy Signaling from the Administration to the Federal Reserve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(1), pages 83-101, February.
    24. Stanley Fischer, 1991. "Growth, Macroeconomics, and Development," NBER Working Papers 3702, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. De Haan, Jakob & Zelhorst, Dick, 1990. "The impact of government deficits on money growth in developing countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 455-469, December.
    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. Fountas, Stilianos, 2001. "The relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in the UK: 1885-1998," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 77-83, December.
    2. Stilianos Fountas & Menelaos Karanasos & Marika Karanassou, "undated". "A GARCH Model of Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty with Simultaneous Feedback," Discussion Papers 00/24, Department of Economics, University of York.
    3. Ghura, Dhaneshwar, 1995. "Effects of macroeconomic policies on income growth, inflation, and output growth in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 367-395, August.
    4. Brian O'Reilly, 1998. "The Benefits of Low Inflation: Taking Shock "A nickel ain't worth a dime any more" [Yogi Berra]," Technical Reports 83, Bank of Canada.
    5. Broto Carmen & Ruiz Esther, 2009. "Testing for Conditional Heteroscedasticity in the Components of Inflation," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-30, May.
    6. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    7. Roubini, Nouriel & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1995. "A growth model of inflation, tax evasion, and financial repression," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 275-301, April.
    8. Gillman, Max & Kejak, Michal & Valentinyi, Akos, 1999. "Inflation, Growth, and Credit Services," Transition Economics Series 13, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    9. Hwang, Y., 2007. "Causality between inflation and real growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 146-153, January.
    10. Tsyplakov, Alexander, 2010. "The links between inflation and inflation uncertainty at the longer horizon," MPRA Paper 26908, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Mr. Helmut Wagner, 2001. "Implications of Globalization for Monetary Policy," IMF Working Papers 2001/184, International Monetary Fund.
    12. Eijffinger, Sylvester & Schaling, Eric & Hoeberichts, Marco, 1998. "Central bank independence: A sensitivity analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 73-88, February.
    13. Palle Andersen & David Gruen, 1995. "Macroeconomic Policies and Growth," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Palle Andersen & Jacqueline Dwyer & David Gruen (ed.),Productivity and Growth, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    14. Dotsey, Michael & Ireland, Peter, 1996. "The welfare cost of inflation in general equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 29-47, February.
    15. 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.
    16. Wilson, Bradley Kemp, 2006. "The links between inflation, inflation uncertainty and output growth: New time series evidence from Japan," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 609-620, September.
    17. Allan Crawford & Marcel Kasumovich, 1996. "Does Inflation Uncertainty Vary with the Level of Inflation?," Staff Working Papers 96-09, Bank of Canada.
    18. Hwang, Y., 2001. "Relationship between inflation rate and inflation uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 179-186, November.
    19. Andres, Javier & Domenech, Rafael & Molinas, Cesar, 1996. "Macroeconomic performance and convergence in OECD countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1683-1704, December.
    20. Conrad, Christian & Hartmann, Matthias, 2014. "Cross-sectional evidence on the relation between monetary policy, macroeconomic conditions and low-frequency inflation uncertainty," Working Papers 0574, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Money; central bank independence;

    JEL classification:

    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • F36 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Financial Aspects of Economic Integration
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions

    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:psl:bnlaqr:1992:33. 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: Carlo D'Ippoliti (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.economiacivile.it .

    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.