IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/752.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Central Banking as a Political Principal-Agent Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Fratianni, Michele
  • von Hagen, Jürgen
  • Waller, Christopher

Abstract

An inflation and stabilization bias may arise as a result of the principal-agent nature of monetary policy. Both depend on the degree of political uncertainty and the type of relationship between central bankers and the incumbent political leaders. Specifically, our analysis indicates how a close relationship between central bankers and incumbent political leaders can lead to undesirable outcomes, particularly so during periods of electoral competition and political uncertainty. Various institutional proposals exist for resolving this problem. Our analysis shows that in contrast to Friedman-type policy rules or the appointment of `conservative' central bankers, personal independence of the central banker from government or performance-orientated compensation packages can achieve both optimal stabilization and the elimination of the inflation bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Fratianni, Michele & von Hagen, Jürgen & Waller, Christopher, 1993. "Central Banking as a Political Principal-Agent Problem," CEPR Discussion Papers 752, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:752
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=752
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Central Banking; Monetary Policy; Political Business Cycles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:752. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.