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The powers that are: central bank independence in the Greenspan era

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  • Gerard H. Kuper

    (University of Groningen)

Abstract

This paper investigates political pressure from incumbent Presidents and Congress on US monetary policy during the period that Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve. We propose an expectations-augmented Taylor rule in which we replace realized values with expectations, and use the unemployment gap instead of the output gap. We apply a state-space framework that allows the use of mixed frequency data. Our findings suggest that the Federal Reserve under Greenspan did not create election driven cycles, but also did not strictly follow the Taylor rule. The deviations from the Taylor rule are not driven by partisan politics, but are rooted in the expected economic conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerard H. Kuper, 2018. "The powers that are: central bank independence in the Greenspan era," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 485-499, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:54:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s00181-016-1225-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-016-1225-y
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Taylor rule; Central bank independence; Political business cycles; State space;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

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