What are the pros and cons of involving external auditors in banking supervision? This paper investigates the relationship between banking supervision and the involvement of external auditors from a theoretical and empirical perspective. We first provide a simple principal-agent framework that...

This paper analyses the gender representation in monetary policy committees, offering three contributions. We propose the first index to evaluate the gender representation in monetary policymaking – i.e. the GMP Index – for a sample of 112 countries as of 2015. Second, we investigate the...

In the Concluding Remarks that Paolo Baffi - Governor of Bank of Italy - read on 31 May 1979, he stressed that “the actions of central banks are no longer cloaked in silence, and perhaps never will be again. Whereas in the past silence was seen as a guarantee of independence, today this is...

We construct a new dataset on the presence of women on central bank monetary policy committees for a set of 103 countries, over the period 2002-2016. We document an increasing share of women in monetary policy committees, which is mainly associated with a higher overall presence of women in...

The aim of this paper is to use a behavioural political economy approach to revise the standard approach of optimal currency areas, and applying it to the Eurozone case. We discuss the pros and cons of the Euro membership if behavioural biases - prospect theory - influence the citizens and...

This chapter reviews the evolution of the theory of monetary policy design since the 1980s, highlighting the emerging role of central banker psychology. Three subsequent stages are evident. First, the central bank was considered as an independent institution (modern economics). Second, central...

This paper employs a new and comprehensive database of central bank institutional design to reassess the role of the independence of these public administrations in influencing the macroeconomic performance of countries, before and after the Global Financial Crisis. Using new dynamic indices,...

Technocracy has come to be increasingly regarded as a threat to representative democracy. Significant attention has thus been recently devoted to exploring public preferences towards technocratic institutions. Elected policymakers’ attitudes have instead not been investigated as...

This paper discusses the evolution of central bank communication, focusing on recent efforts by central banks to engage with a wider audience via social media. We document the social media presence of major central banks and discuss how analyzing Twitter content by and about monetary policy...

What explains the worldwide changes in central bank design over the past five decades? Using a new dataset on central bank institutional design, this paper investigates the timing, pace and magnitude of reforms in a sample of 155 countries over the period 1972-2017. I construct a new dynamic...