Institutional Structure for Monetary Policy: A Comparative Assessment of Ten Central Banks

The main objective of this article is to evaluate the institutional quality of ten central banks. The countries included for this study are New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Germany, Chile, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. The central banks of these countries exhibit many disparities and similarities in their monetary regimes which provide ample scope for their analysis and evaluation. The analysis of the institutional experiences of other central banks offers rich lessons to India in pursuing its central bank reforms. This study reveals that almost all the central banks, with the exception of Indonesia and India, exhibit high standards of institutional quality in terms of balancing independence, transparency and accountability. The Central Bank (CB) models of the United Kingdom and New Zealand stand first in the world in this regard, closely followed by the United States and Chile.