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Central Bank Independence and Transparency: Evolution and Effectiveness

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Author Info
Christopher Crowe
Ellen E. Meade

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Abstract

While central banks have existed since the seventeenth century, their purpose, functions, and operations have evolved over time. Over the past two decades, the pace of reforms in terms of institutional independence and transparency has been particularly brisk. This paper examines the current level of central bank independence (CBI) and transparency in a broad sample of countries using newly constructed measures, and looks at the evolution in both measures from an earlier time period. The legal independence of central banks (measured using an index first constructed by Cukierman, Webb, and Neyapti, 1992) has increased markedly since the 1980s, particularly for emerging market and developing countries, while the rise in transparency since the late 1990s (measured using an index based upon the work of Eijffinger and Geraats, 2006) has been less impressive. Increases in CBI have tended to occur in more democratic countries and in countries with high levels of past inflation. More independent central banks in turn tend to be more transparent, while transparency is also positively correlated with measures of national institutional quality. Exploiting the time dimension of our data to eliminate country fixed effects and using instrumental variable estimation to overcome endogeneity concerns, we present robust evidence that greater CBI is associated with lower inflation. We also find that enhanced transparency practices are associated with the private sector making greater use of information provided by the central bank, consistent with a simple signal extraction model in which the public signal becomes more precise as our transparency measure increases.

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Paper provided by American University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 2007-20.

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Length: 30 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2007
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Handle: RePEc:amu:wpaper:2007

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Web page: http://www.american.edu/cas/economics/

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Related research
Keywords: Central bank independence; transparency; monetary policy;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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  3. Luis Jácome & Francisco Vázquez, 2005. "Any Link Between Legal Central Bank Independence and Inflation? Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean," Macroeconomics 0508011, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Geraats, Petra M., 2006. "How transparent are central banks?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-21, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  5. Barro, Robert J. & Gordon, David B., 1983. "Rules, discretion and reputation in a model of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 101-121. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Alex Cukierman & Stefan Gerlach, 2003. "The inflation bias revisited: theory and some international evidence," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 71(5), pages 541-565, 09. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Petra M. Geraats, 2006. "Transparency of Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice," CESifo Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 111-152, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  27. Christopher Crowe & Ellen E. Meade, 2007. "The Evolution of Central Bank Governance around the World," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 69-90, Fall.
  28. Berger, Helge & de Haan, Jakob & Eijffinger, Sylvester C W, 2001. " Central Bank Independence: An Update of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 15(1), pages 3-40, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  29. Cukierman, Alex & Miller, Geoffrey P. & Neyapti, Bilin, 2002. "Central bank reform, liberalization and inflation in transition economies--an international perspective," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 237-264, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  30. Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher, 2007. "Social value of public information - testing the limits to transparency," Working Paper Series 821, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  33. Christopher W. Crowe, 2007. "Testing the Transparency Benefits of Inflation Targeting: Evidence from Private Sector Forecasts," IMF Working Papers 06/289, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Jonas Dovern & Ulrich Fritsche & Jiri Slacalek, 2009. "Disagreement among Forecasters in G7 Countries," Macroeconomics and Finance Series 200906, Hamburg University, Department Wirtschaft und Politik. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Christian A. Stoltenberg & Vadym Lepetyuk, 2009. "Policy announcements and welfare," Working Papers. Serie AD 2009-13, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie). [Downloadable!]
  3. Axel Lindner, 2008. "Evaluating communication strategies for public agencies: transparency, opacity, and secrecy," IWH Discussion Papers 8-08, Halle Institute for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
  4. Nergiz Dincer & Barry Eichengreen, 2009. "Central Bank Transparency: Causes, Consequences and Updates," NBER Working Papers 14791, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Dai, Meixing, 2008. "Public debt and currency crisis: how central bank opacity can make things bad?," MPRA Paper 13867, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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