Central bank independence has been championed on the grounds that it avoids political business cycles, the time-inconsistency problem of discretionary monetary policy, and political conflicts. However, after the financial crisis, central banks have resorted to unconventional monetary policies...

This study analyzes the relationships between domestic and foreign output gaps, current-account imbalances, and real effective exchange-rate (REER) misalignments. We first set up a theoretical framework based on the elasticities and absorption approaches of the balance of payments to derive and...