The Transformation and Performance of Emerging Market Economies Across the Great Divide of the Global Financial Crisis

The process of central bank (CB) evolution by emerging market economies (EMEs), including central bank independence (CBI) and transparency (CBT), converged towards that of the advanced economies (AEs) before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-2008. It was greatly aided by the adoption of inflation targeting. In this paper we evaluate this convergence process for a representative set of EMEs and AEs since the disruption of the GFC. We use several measures of institutional development (changes in CBI, changes in CBT, changes in a new index of institutional resilience and changes in a new measure of CB credibility). We then use panel VARs based on both factor models and observed data to ascertain the impact of global shocks, financial shocks, trade shocks and credibility shocks on the EMEs versus the AEs