Transitioning to a sustainable economy and reducing air pollution hinge on appropriate economic incentives and financing conditions. The auto loan market offers a prime setting, as lenders' credit terms can either discourage or incentivize the purchase of high-pollution vehicles. Using...

During the last decades, central bank independence proved to be the bedrock of credible and effective monetary policy. Both past and recent history provides plenty of evidence of disastrous outcomes with high inflation and economic stagnation, when central banks – lacking independence – were...

Central bank independence (CBI) refers to the absence of influence of politicians on monetary policy making. Since we wrote our first surveys of the literature on central bank independence (Eijffinger and de Haan, 1996 and Berger et al., 2001), a lot has changed. The level of CBI has increased...

We develop a model of monetary policy committee decision-making, building on the framework of games played through agents (GPTA). Interest groups seek to influence policy by offering action-contingent contracts to committee members. The resulting equilibrium admits a simple characterization and...

Central bank independence (CBI) refers to the absence of influence of politicians on monetary policy making. Since we wrote our first surveys of the literature on central bank independence (Eijffinger and de Haan, 1996 and Berger et al., 2001), a lot has changed. The level of CBI has increased...

Under the overwhelming evidence of numerous empirical studies that found a negative correlation between the degree of independence and the level of inflation, many governments granted their national central banks independent status around 1990. With low inflation rates in the subsequent period -...

Under the overwhelming evidence of numerous empirical studies that found a negative correlation between the degree of independence and the level of inflation, many governments granted their national central banks independent status around 1990. With low inflation rates in the subsequent period -...

This study examines the determinants of inflation volatility in Tunisia, focusing on central bank independence (CBI), economic transparency, and macroeconomic fundamentals. Although CBI is widely regarded as essential for monetary credibility, its effectiveness depends on its institutional...

This paper studies the response of inflation expectations to an exogenous shift in central bank preferences. We use the unexpected announcement of the resignation of Jens Weidmann, the president of the Deutsche Bundesbank, in 2021 as a natural experiment constituting a rare case of an exogenous...

This paper studies the impact of central bank independence on sovereign borrowing, using an index that captures institutional constraints on central bank lending to the government across 155 countries from 1972 to 2023. The findings show that tighter lending to the executive significantly...

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of central bank independence on inflation in Western Balkan countries, from 2010q1 to 2022q4. In this paper the panel Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) model for six Western Balkan countries is used to analyse the effects of central bank...

This study proposes an implicit index for central bank credibility, which is critical in developing countries implementing an inflation-targeting regime. In a credible central bank, the policy rate impacts the interest rate on short-term deposits. Under this assumption, the residuals obtained...

We analyze the interaction between the Taiwan central bank's profits and its policies. To earn large and consistent profits, the Taiwan central bank significantly expanded its balance sheet and relied on inexpensive short-term domestic funding to invest in longer-term foreign debt securities. In...

Since mid-2021, the euro-area economy has gone through several shocks, leading to the highest inflation since the creation of the European Monetary Union. A forceful and persistent response from the European Central Bank, grounded in the monetary policy framework it agreed in 2021 ahead of the...

An idée fixe of Great Moderation economic policy was that central banks are only effective macroeconomic managers when they are segregated from electoral politics. That idea made a swift transition from radical heterodoxy to commonsensical orthodoxy during the 1980s and proved remarkably...

This paper investigates the impact of reforms altering legal central bank independence (CBI) on monetary policy discipline and credibility, two key mechanisms shaping price stability. Using a sample of 155 countries over more than 50 years (1972-2023), we show that reforms improving CBI...

This paper investigates the impact of reforms altering legal central bank independence (CBI) on monetary policy discipline and credibility, two key mechanisms shaping price stability. Using a sample of 155 countries over more than 50 years (1972-2023), we show that reforms improving CBI...

Recent crises have cast doubt on the legitimacy of technocratic power, yet its role in global economic governance remains poorly understood. Revisiting the collapse of Bretton Woods, we propose a dynamic theory of global monetary governance to explain how expanding central bank discretion can...

How do the President and the Congress affect the policy choices of the Federal Open Market Committee, the primary policymaking arm of the Federal Reserve System (the Fed)? I draw on a commonly used tool for estimating the sensitivity of Fed responses to output and inflation - the Taylor rule -...

This note offers a brief snapshot of selected insights from the literature on monetary-fiscal interactions and their implications for inflation-targeting central banks in an era of high public debt. It highlights the fiscal foundations of price stability and potential coordination issues when...

This paper examines the impact of Central Bank independence on Inflation in 16 MENA countries from 1990 to 2017. By employing a two-stage least squares instrumental variables approach, the study assesses the influence of three legal independence measures on the inflation rate. It investigates...

The 1970s oil shocks sparked high and persistent inflation in advanced economies, also tied to the collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system in 1971 that left monetary policy without a stable institutional reference framework. Only in the following decades did a new monetary...

Unprecedented balance sheet expansion in recent years has resulted in heightened financial risk for central banks, reflected initially in higher profits and subsequently in significant losses. Combining data on central bank balance sheets with market data on asset prices, we provide evidence on...

In this article we argue that we can more easily understand the duality of central banks (CBs) and independent central banks (ICBs) through an understanding of their underlying dualities. As we explore, heterodox and orthodox views and methodologies present two distinct ways of conceptualizing...

How should central banks explore tokenized reserves? Central banks are increasingly exploring how to make their reserves available to selected banks using distributed ledger technology, referred to as tokenized reserves. This chapter covers policy objectives for tokenized reserves, operating...

This article introduces a new conceptual framework for examining the transformation of central banks' activities at the intersection of science and politics. It builds on the results of the contributions gathered in this special section on the scientization of central banking, to which this...

This article investigates the scientization process in central banks, using the Bank of England (BoE) as a case study. Its main goal is to clarify the interactions and tensions among three dimensions of scientization: contributory, policymaking and legitimizing. To do so, we outline an ideal...

This article focuses on the elites governing central banks in order to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into central bank scientization. We first critically discuss the "politics of scientization" as a discursive strategy that depoliticizes monetary policy under neoliberalism. We...

This article is focusing on the economic literature attempting to solve the problem of the impossible trilemmas of the euro area, by reconciling the relations between the three essential pillars - supranational monetary independence, national fiscal independence and the no bail-out clause...

The expansion of central bank balance sheets has become a critical topic in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Central banks have taken unprecedented measures to ensure price stability and financial stability, particularly when traditional policy tools were...

Trust in the central bank is an essential ingredient for a successful conduct of monetary policy. However, for many central banks trust has recently declined, for instance in the wake of the post-pandemic inflation surge, due to large errors in central banks' inflation forecasts, or given...

This article examines the effects of monetary integration on the synchronization of the business cycle within ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and contributes to the economic literature dealing with these aspects. First, the indicators of de facto and de jure central bank...