We study the link between central bank independence and inflation by providing narrative and empiricial evidence based on Latin America’s experience over the past 100 years. We present a novel historical dataset of central bank independence for 17 Latin American countries and recount the rocky...

Following the experience of the global financial crisis, central banks have been asked to undertake unprecedented responsibilities. Governments and the public appear to have high expectations that monetary policy can provide solutions to problems that do not necessarily fit in the realm of...

Using a political economy approach, this paper sheds light on how two factors – central bankers' preferences and the central bank's design – progressively assumed a crucial role in the evolution of monetary policy economics in the last four decades. The two factors jointly identify the...

Institutions are important for the analysis of the association between the deficits and inflation. This study used central bank independence and financial markets as institutional variables to investigate whether deficits are inflationary or not in the presence of dependent central bank and...

This paper critically assesses the rise of central bank independence (CBI) as an apparent success story in modern monetary economics. As to the observed rise in CBI since the late 1980s, we single out the role of peculiar German traditions in spreading CBI across continental Europe, while its...

We study whether central bank independence (CBI) and monetary policy arrangements can jointly influence the likelihood of policymakers assigning banking supervision to central banks. Our empirical analysis shows that, assuming a benevolent government, a higher degree of central bank operational...

It has been argued that economies with more independent central banks experience lower inflation over time. In this paper we show that this relationship is sensitive to the methodology through which central bank independence indices are constructed. We stress the importance of employing dynamic...

In the past, central banks used to be very reserved regarding their activities, strategies and monetary policy decisions and actions. As central banks become more and more independent, transparency gained importance based upon accountability arguments. An important fact for adopting an...

The economic literature regarding central banking and monetary policy suggest that the response of a standard monetary policy as a response to an inflationary bias, caused by a discretionary monetary policy represents the delegation of a monetary policy to an independent institution, which is...

Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between rules and inflation is relatively weak. In this paper, we first discuss likely causes for this weak link and present the argument that monetary commitment...