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The term "central bank independence" (or abbreviated, CBI) can be broadly defined as the degree of freedom of the central bank to pursue monetary policy without interference from political considerations. The idea of central bank independence has been widely accepted over the last several decades by many countries around the world, both developed and developing. Since being first written about academically in the late 1980s, many countries have come to adopt this policy and many governments have come to recognize this as standard procedure. As such, many countries around the world granted autonomy to their central banks during the 1980s and 1990s. The majority of past studies have examined primarily the impact of central bank independence on inflation. however, the additional theoretical benefits are much more far reaching, the result of a more stable and prosperous macroeconomic environment. Additionally, there is only now sufficient data to empirically determine whether many of these claims are true. This study examines central bank independence in developing countries of Latin America and Asia as well as selected developed countries to determine what actual impact an autonomous central bank has had. It also examines such phenomena as financial crises (including the current global crisis of 2008-2009), inflation targeting, legal systems, country development and fiscal policy to determine the effects of these items on not only inflation, but the broad spectrum of macroeconomic outcomes. Although there is some empirical evidence to support the benefits of central bank independence, it is limited in scope to certain areas.O termo "independência do banco central" (ou IBC) pode ser amplamente definido como o grau de liberdade que o banco central possui para seguir sua política monetária sem a interferência de considerações políticas. A ideia da independência do banco central foi aceita nas últimas décadas por muitos países ao redor do mundo, tanto desenvolvidos como em desenvolvimento. Desde a primeira literatura acadêmica a respeito no final dos anos 80, muitos países começaram a adotar essa política e muitos governos a reconheceram como padrão. Assim, muitos países ao redor do mundo concederam autonomia a seus bancos centrais nos anos 80 e 90. A maior parte dos estudos existentes investigou principalmente o impacto da independência do banco central na inflação. Porém, os benefícios teóricos adicionais vão muito além, resultado de um ambiente macroeconômico mais estável e próspero. Ademais, somente agora há dados suficientes para a determinação empírica da veracidade de muitas dessas alegações. Este estudo investiga a independência dos bancos centrais em países em desenvolvimento na América Latina e na Ásia, além de determinados países desenvolvidos, para determinar o real impacto de um banco central autônomo. Também examina fenômenos como crises financeiras (inclusive a crise global em curso no período 2008-2009), estabelecimento de metas de inflação, sistemas legais, desenvolvimento dos países e política fiscal para determinar os efeitos destes itens não somente na inflação, mas no espectro amplo de resultados macroeconômicos. Apesar de haver evidências empíricas para apoiar os benefícios da independência do banco central, seu escopo é limitado a determinadas áreas.

Fiscal policy may impose restrictions on Inflation Targeting when Central Bank Independence (cbi) is institutionally weak and society has a real exchange rate target that is highly valued. In this environment, fiscal policy constrains the decisions of a committed, independent Central Bank (cb) regarding inflation. When such a pressure is strong enough to threaten cbi, monetary authorities react by setting an inflation target that differs from the one that would prevail in the absence of those threats. A simple model is used to illustrate this point where the cb takes into account the probability of survival as an independent institution.

The study looks deeper in the relationship between central bank independence and Gross Domestic product growth and other economic variables which are indicative of improved performance with specific reference to a developing economy. It seeks to find out how the central bank policies affected the state of development of the financial sector and the extent to which the banking sector influenced economic development in the economy. The research also aims to find out how the government affected or influenced the state of development of the financial sector in the country. It was found that the government was sorely dependent on central bank financing as a matter of survival due to limited sources of finance as GDP decline meant a reduction tax revenue base. Rising inflation and contracting real incomes put pressure on the fiscal budget. Questionnaires, interviews and document review were used to obtain information for the study. It was concluded that the cohesion between fiscal and monetary policy is of paramount importance; and there was need for a high degree of formal instrument independence.

La orientación ideológica de los gobiernos, el momento de las elecciones ylos intereses particulares de los dirigentes pueden afectar de manera importante la política económica en cualquiera de sus componentes. Se puede esperar que un gobierno establezca sus políticas en materia económica ya sea siguiendo los preceptos ideológicos que el partido político al cual pertenece haya proclamado, o bien puede “manipular” la economía con el único propósito de complacer a su electorado y así mantenerse en el poder. Así, el momento de las elecciones puede marcar el rumbo que tomará la economía de acuerdo con lo que decidan los votantes. Si estos deciden retirar su apoyo al gobernante de turno, se presenta un relevo o cambio en la persona que toma las decisiones en materia económica y, por tanto, hay un re-direccionamiento de la economía, es decir, se presenta lo que se conoce en la literatura como un “ciclo político”. Basado en datos anuales a nivel nacional durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX, la presente investigación pretende buscar la existencia de ciclos políticos oportunistas o partidistas sobre la deuda pública y sus componentes básicos, así comode la base monetaria.

Inflation targeting occured for coping with the inflation and providing price stability after 1990s. In addition it started to have an application in developing and developed countries. Inflation targeting attributes to countries for providing stability by improving the monetary policy. In this study the success of this policy was evaluated in those developing and developed countries. The results of this study showed that it successful in decreasing the rate of inflation of developing and developed countries. During the period in which this policy was applied inflation targeting approach it was observed that it made positive contributions to growth rate in developed countries.

This study presents market-based evidence that threats to central bank independence increase exchange rate volatility. We use Trump's tweets that criticize the Fed's monetary policies and advocate lower interest rates as a proxy for threats to central bank independence. We find that intraday exchange rate volatility rises following Trump's Fed tweets. Moreover, this relation is more pronounced for the tweets with greater market attention and more negative sentiment. Our findings suggest that market participants do not perceive the Federal Reserve as independent from political pressure. • Provide market-based evidence that threats to central bank independence increase exchange rate volatility. • Intraday exchange rate volatility rises following Trump's Fed tweets. • Federal Reserve may not be independent from political pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although central bank independence is a core tenet of monetary policy-making, it remains politically contested: In many emerging markets, populist governments are in frequent public conflict with the central bank. At other times, the same governments profess to respect the monetary authority's independence. We model this conflict drawing on the crisis bargaining literature. Our model predicts that populist politicians will often bring a nominally independent central bank to heel without having to change its legal status. To provide evidence, we build a new data set of public pressure on central banks by classifying over 9000 analyst reports using machine learning. We find that populist politicians are more likely than non-populists to exert public pressure on the central bank, unless checked by financial markets, and also more likely to obtain interest rate concessions. Our findings underscore that de jure does not equal de facto central bank independence in the face of populist pressures., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2022.)

Independent central banks prefer balanced budgets due to the long-run connection between deficits and inflation, and can enforce their preference through interest rate increases and denial of credit to the government. This article argues that legal central bank independence (CBI) deters fiscal deficits predominantly in countries with rule of law and impartial contract enforcement, a free press and constraints on executive power. It further suggests that CBI may not affect fiscal deficits in a counter-cyclical fashion, but instead depending on the electoral calendar and government partisanship. The article also tests the novel hypotheses using new yearly data on legal CBI for seventy-eight countries from 1970 to 2007. The results show that CBI restrains deficits only in democracies, during non-election years and under left government tenures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whereas the establishment of all previous alliances in the post-Soviet space was motivated by a desire for political union, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has focused on the economic component.1 One of its goals has been defined as a transition to a coordinated and concerted economic policy, including fiscal and monetary policies. Some decisions in this area are already being taken. But in light of the global financial and economic crisis, central banks have had to pursue a looser monetary policy, while governments in all EAEU countries have increased their influence on central bank decisions. There are differences in this respect: in some countries (Belarus and Russia), the primary objective of the central bank has not been identified at all and there is a multiplicity of objectives (see Table 1); in others, one and the same objective—the achievement of price stability—is defined as both the objective of the monetary authority and the goal of its monetary policy. In Belarus and Russia, price stability is regarded as a means of ensuring the stability of the national currency (the ruble). In order to coordinate the key elements of monetary policy across the EAEU, the authors suggest setting a primary objective for the central bank, vesting it with exclusive authority in the area of monetary policy, and increasing its real independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the belief is strong in the Brazilian federal government that operational central bank independence is a basic condition to assure price stability. The literature concerning this subject highlights that a high degree of independence and a low turnover of central bank governor are associated with low inflation. This paper analyzes the relation between central bank independence and inflation in Brazil during 1980-2002. The findings denote that there is no effect on inflation due to an increase in degree of independence and a fall in turnover rate.

Attempting to find the technically optimal monetary policy is futile if the Federal Reserve's independence is undermined by political influences. F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James Buchanan each sought ways to improve the performance of the Federal Reserve. They each ended up rejecting the possibility that technical refinement or minor reforms might be sufficient. After properly accounting for the concerns of robust political economy, each concluded that a fundamental restructuring of our monetary system was necessary. Friedman turned to binding rules, Buchanan to constitutionalism, and Hayek to competing private currencies. We synthesize their contributions to make a case for applying the concepts of robust political economy to the Federal Reserve through the adoption of professional humility, creative thinking, and an emphasis on the politically possible, not the politically acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the most comprehensive dataset onde jurecentral bank independence (CBI), including yearly data from 182 countries between 1970 and 2012. The dataset identifies statutory reforms affecting CBI, their direction, and the attributes necessary to build the Cukierman, Webb and Neyapty index. Previous datasets focused on developed countries, and included non-representative samples of developing countries. This dataset’s substantially broader coverage has important implications. First, it challenges the conventional wisdom about central bank reforms in the world, revealing CBI increases and restrictions in decades and regions previously considered barely affected by reforms. Second, the inclusion of almost 100 countries usually overlooked in previous studies suggests that the sample selection may have substantially affected results. Simple analyses show that the associations between CBI and inflation, unemployment or growth are very sensitive to sample selection. Finally, the dataset identifies numerous CBI decreases (restrictions), whereas previous datasets mostly look at CBI increases. These data’s coverage not only allows researchers to test competing explanations of the determinants and effects of CBI in a global sample, but it also provides a useful instrument for cross-national studies in diverse fields, such as liberalization, diffusion, political institutions, democratization, or responses to financial crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the impact of elections on the inflationary process in Bangladesh i.e., to observe whether elections have any influence on monetary variables like money supply, exchanges rate and thus inflation. We used quarterly data as the incumbent in Bangladesh must give a maximum of 3 months' time to the caretaker government to accomplish the election. Our full ARDL estimation suggested that an appreciation of the exchange rate just before the election reduced inflation significantly and an effective way of incumbent's to gain popularity. We found that current inflation was positively associated (though not significantly) with the previous quarter's money supply measured by M1. The incumbent took policies to reduce the inflation during election period as voters place more importance in the recent history. We find evidence of political monetary cycles in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Bank's independence should be given priority so that it can withstand political pressure to stimulate the economy before elections or finance election-related increases in government spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) is the central bank of the United States. Because of its power and importance in guiding the economy, the Fed's independence from direct political influence has made it a target of ideologically motivated attacks throughout its history, with an especially aggressive round of attacks coming in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and ongoing today. We defend Fed independence. We point to the Fed's exemplary performance during and after the 2008 crisis, and we offer the example of a potential future crisis in which Congress fails to increase the debt ceiling to show how the Fed's independence makes it the only entity that can minimize the damage during crises (both market-driven and policy-induced). We further argue that the Fed's independence is justified to prevent self-dealing by politicians, even when no crisis is imminent. Although the classic justification for Fed independence focuses on the risk that political actors will keep interest rates lower than appropriate for the long-term health of the economy, we show that Fed independence addresses the risk of self dealing and other pathologies even when, as now, political actors favor tighter monetary policy than appropriate for the long-term health of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian regimes have surpassed democracies in foreign reserve accumulation since the Asian Financial Crisis. Two prominent institutionalist theories could explain this diverging trend in reserves: First, the political business cycle theory, suggesting that reserves are reduced before an election. Second, the veto player theory, implying that a high number of veto players increases the de facto independence of central bankers, who are reluctant to invest in reserves. A time-series cross-sectional analysis for up to 182 countries over the period 1990–2013 shows that democratic governments tend to reduce their reserves before elections. While veto players do not affect reserves directly, a high number of veto players tends to limit a political business cycle before an election. Elections and veto players do not have an influence in authoritarian regimes. Election cycles tend to explain why democracies have relatively fallen behind in a period of massive reserve accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From their establishment to today, central banks have subjected to many changings related to their functions, objectives and institutional structures. In the past, most central banks in the world functioned as depertmeuts of governments. Since their independence were insufficient, central banks have used monetary policy institutions to support government's objectives such as growth and employment. After stagflation crisis that occurcd in the 1970's many economist began attribute more importance to central bank independence. After this, especially at the end of 1980's most of countries make arrangements with the purpose of increasing their central bank independence. One of these counry is Turkey. In 2001Turkey has changed central bank law that is designed to increase central bank independence. In this study, after exemaning the meaning of central bank independence and why central bank independence is an important issue, we will dwell on independence of Central Bank of Republic of Turkey (CBRT). Later we will evaluate the lessons from this study and present some suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the characteristics that define the monetary authority governance is the independence from the political sphere, and it is established worldwide since the 1980s, after the Bundesbank success in containing inflation, success that was assigned to its quality of an independent central bank. In this article we try to illustrate the development of the central bank independence against the political field, considering also the inflation development, since the beginning of the transition period, in Romania. The objective formulated in this article is part of a broader one, dealing with the relationship between the electoral cycle and the financial policies. The analysis showed that in Romania the relationship between electoral cycles and the conduct of the National Bank of Romania (NBR) is shown through the intervention of the monetary authority for the purposes of correcting the tendencies of a presumptive procyclical fiscal policy, given not only the limits imposed by the NBR Statute, but the desire to avoid the risk of impairing the credibility of this institution by engaging in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence on the degree to which central bank independence can constrain government budget deficits remains surprisingly scarce. This paper finds empirical support for the importance of the central institutional constraint for a 14-country sample of Latin American countries over 1990-2012. These results suggest that greater central bank autonomy has indeed helped reign in fiscal excesses in a region that has been plagued by inflationary deficit expansion for much of the post-war period. The ability to potentially discipline government policy adds to an independent central bank's inherent role in adding to the checks and balances essential to a well-functioning democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine legislative activity to determine when Congress threatens the Fed and whether this pressure affects monetary policy. By the late-1980s Congress shifted from threatening when unemployment was high to threatening when inflation was high. We use the Romer and Romer monetary shocks to isolate changes in the federal funds rate that cannot be explained by economic conditions and ask whether these shocks respond to pressure. In the 1970s, the Fed responded to bills credibly threatening Fed powers by lowering the federal funds target below that prescribed by current and forecast economic conditions. However, this accommodation ceased in the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an extended version of a time-inconsistency model of monetary policy we show that the degree of effective monetary policy conservatism can be uncovered by studying to what extent central banks react to real disturbances. By estimating central bank reaction functions in moving and overlapping intervals for the period of 1985 to 2007 using an ordered logit approach in a panel setting we derive a time-varying indicator of effective monetary policy conservatism for Canada, Sweden, the UK and the US. Employing this indicator we show that increasing effective conservatism tends to lower inflation without increasing the output gap. However, while a higher degree of effective conservatism does not result in lower inflation uncertainty the variance of the output gap tends to decrease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the effects of fiscal policy on term structure of interest rate in Nigeria between 1981 and 2014. The paper built on the fact that continuous increase in fiscal deficit in Nigeria has not translated into equal change in term structure of interest rate as proposed by the economic theory. Using secondary annual time series data which are obtained from Central Bank statistical bulletin, 2014, the paper employed appropriate econometric techniques such unit-root test, Johansen Co-integration technique, Error Correction Mechanism and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares. The paper shows that fiscal deficit has a positive and significant effect on term structure of interest rate in Nigeria and concludes that consumers are not forward-looking in Nigeria as proposed by Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis theory. Consumers in Nigeria increase their consumptions has government employed expansionary fiscal policy which may reduce the savings and investment. Consequently, reduces growth. Thus, the implication is that fiscal deficit could responsible for the uncertainties and inconsistencies in the term structure of interest rates in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]