Central bank independence and monetarypolicymaking institutions —Past, present and future

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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
European Journal of Political Economy
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e j p e
Central bank independence and monetary policymaking institutions — Past,
present and future
Alex Cukierman ⁎
Berglas School of Economics, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel
CEPR, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
This is an extensive survey of worldwide developments in the area of monetary policymaking
Received 30 October 2007
institutions during the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. In addition the last
Received in revised form 22 July 2008
section discusses current open issues and future challenges. Section 2 reviews the changes that
Accepted 22 July 2008
have occurred in the area of central bank independence (CBI) during the last twenty years,
Available online 29 July 2008
discusses reasons for those developments and provides an overview of accumulated empirical
evidence on the relation between CBI and the performance of the economy. Section 3 discusses
JEL classification:
lessons from stabilization of inflation, reviews the evidence and implications of asymmetric
E50
central bank objectives and considers the issue of CBI within the broader context of choosing a
E52
E54
nominal anchor. Section 4 reviews the impact of independence on economic performance in
E31
the presence of labor unions. Section 5 considers future challenges facing modern central
banks. The discussion presumes that CBI and price stability are here to stay and focuses on
Keywords:
issues relating to the conduct of monetary policy by independent central banks in an era of
Central bank independence
price stability, like the risks associated with flexible inflation targeting and the impact of central
Economic performance
bank capital and finances on its independence.
Nominal anchors
© 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Monetary institutions
Future challenges
1. Introduction
Twenty years ago and earlier, most central banks in the world functioned as departments of ministries of finance. They were
expected, by law, custom or both, to utilize their policy instruments to achieve a myriad of objectives like high levels of growth and
employment, provision of funds to government for the financing of public expenditures, and to address balance of payments
problems.1 They also were expected to maintain financial and price stability but the price stability objective was one among several
other objectives in the charter of the bank and had no particular status. In some cases like Spain and Norway it did not even appear in
the charter. Paralleling this state of affairs, economic theory did not attribute particular importance to central bank independence
(CBI) and the concept of credibility of monetary policy was in early stages of development. Furthermore, a notable legacy of the
Keynesian revolution was the belief that a certain amount of inflation is conducive to economic growth.
Although some banks had a reasonable amount of legal independence the level of actual independence, particularly in
developing countries, was usually lower than the one indicated in the law. Except for a few cases central banks did not possess
instrument independence and the responsibility for price stability was, at least implicitly, located in the ministry of finance and
other economic branches of government. In a few developed economies (like the UK, Japan, the US and West Germany) with wide
⁎ Berglas School of Economics, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel.
E-mail address: alexcuk@post.tau.ac.il.
1 In the case of many developing countries the central bank often functioned as a development bank that provided subsidized loans to various sectors of the
economy.
0176-2680/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2008.07.007

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capital markets price stability was maintained mainly through the actions of relatively conservative treasury departments or
because of de facto independent central banks.2
Most other countries that enjoyed reasonable levels of price stability achieved this result by pegging their currencies to the
currency of a country with sufficiently conservative aggregate nominal policies. Under the Bretton Woods system most currencies
were automatically pegged to the US $. Following the breakdown of this system in the seventies many countries adopted unilateral
pegs and later on, bands. Countries without either of those three commitment devices endured prolonged episodes of high and
variable inflation as exemplified by the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Israel, Mexico, Chile and other countries.
The contrast of this state of affairs with current practice and academic consensus with respect to CBI cannot be overemphasized.
Most central banks in today's world enjoy substantially higher levels of both legal and actual independence than twenty years ago
or earlier. CBI and accompanying institutional arrangements like inflation targeting have become widely accepted commitment
devices. In spite of some contentious issues the following broad practical consensus backed by academic work has emerged. The
primary responsibility of the central bank (CB) is to assure price stability and financial stability. Without prejudice to these
objectives the CB should support the economic policies of government. To achieve its main objective the bank is given instrument
independence.3 Delegation of authority to a non-elected institution should be accompanied by accountability and transparency. It
is noteworthy that those two buzz words of modern monetary institutions were hardly heard twenty years ago or earlier. In the
absence of independence accountability was unnecessary and, as political entities, governments and ministries of finance had no
incentives to raise questions about their own transparency in the conduct of monetary policy.4
This paper is a selective survey of the vast literature of the last twenty years on CBI.5 Section 2 quickly reviews the institutional
changes that have occurred in the area of central bank autonomy and related monetary policymaking institutions in the world
during the last twenty years. It discusses some of the reasons for those developments and provides an overview of accumulated
empirical evidence on the relation between CBI and the performance of the economy. Section 3 opens with a discussion of some of
the lessons from stabilization of inflation and proceeds to consider the issue of CBI within the broader context of choice of nominal
anchor. It also reviews recent evidence on asymmetric central bank objectives and its consequences. Section 4 briefly reviews
recent literature which considers the impact of effective conservativeness or independence on economic performance in the
presence of labor unions.6 A main insight of this literature is that, in the presence of large wage setters, CBI affects real variables like
the rate of unemployment, implying that conservativeness affects economic performance even in the long run.
Section 5 closes the paper by considering future challenges facing central banks. Price stability is now a permanent fixture of
industrial economies and of many developing economies, and CBI is a well established feature of the contemporary monetary
order. Starting from the presumption that those features are here to stay, the discussion in this part focuses on issues relating to the
conduct of monetary policy by independent central banks in an era of price stability. In such times the bank is naturally expected to
devote more attention to stabilization of the output gap. The section discusses the risks associated with such a flexible inflation
targeting regime. In some instances a trade-off between democratic accountability and CBI may arise. This occurs, for example,
when, due to its obligation to maintain financial stability, the CB engages in operations that lead to substantial losses. A closely
related issue is the distribution of CB profits and losses between the CB and government and the optimal level of CB capital. The
section reviews this hitherto relatively neglected issue.
2. The evolution of CBI over the last two decades: evidence, reasons and consequences
2.1. Evolution of CBI
The most widely available indices of CBI refer to the level of independence as specified in the law. It is well known that actual
independence may often deviate, quite substantially, from legal independence. Such deviations are more important in developing
than in industrial economies. This is probably due to better enforcement of the law in the first group of economies.7 Other, more
2 Partly because of the US wide capital markets, the de facto independence of the Federal Reserve was higher than its legal independence. At the time the
German Bundesbank was unique in that it enjoyed both de jure as well as de facto independence and generally used its independence to promote public support
for price stability. In spite of this long term position the Bundesbank's policy occasionally responded to the electoral cycle. Vaubel (1997) shows that monetary
expansion accelerated at the beginning of pre-election periods when the German government had a political majority at the Bundesbank council and that it
decelerated when the reverse was true.
3 In a few cases like the ECB and the Banco Central de Chile, the bank is even given some limited goal independence in the sense that it is free to determine its
own inflation target.
4 For reasons of space I do not discuss the fast expanding literature on those topics. The March 2007 issue of the European Journal of Political Economy is devoted
to CB transparency and communications.
5 Previous surveys appear in Eijffinger and de Haan (1996) and in Berger et al. (2001).
6 Although related, independence and conservativeness are not quite the same. Independence refers to the ability of the bank to implement the policies it
desires without political interferences. Conservativeness refers to the importance that the bank assigns to price stability in comparison to real objectives like high
levels of economic activity and employment. Obviously, effective conservativeness, that determines policy choices, depends both on the bank's conservativeness,
as well as on its independence. For the purposes of this survey there is no need to distinguish between those two concepts. I therefore use the terms
conservativeness and independence interchangeably to mean “effective conservativeness.” This is also the interpretation of conservativeness in Rogoff (1985)
article in which this term was first introduced. However, there are contexts in which it is useful to keep conservativeness and independence apart (Eijffinger and
Hoeberichts, 1998).
7 Using data till the end of the eighties Cukierman (1992, ch. 19) documents a negative correlation between inflation and legal independence in developed
economies but no significant relation between those two variables in developing countries. More recent evidence surveyed below suggests that the difference
between actual and legal independence may also vary over time within a given country.

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Fig. 1. The average aggregate index of legal independence over time in nine Latin American economies. Remarks: The figure combines data on the aggregate
index of legal independence, LVAW, from Table A1 in Cukierman et al. (1992) for the forty years between 1950 and 1989 with data on the same index for the decade
of the nineties from Appendix II in Jacome and Vazquez (2008-this issue) for nine Latin American countries. The countries are: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia,
Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The index is defined over the zero to one interval, with zero corresponding to complete dependence
and one to the maximum possible level of independence. Each column in the figure represents the average value of LVAW over these countries in the corresponding
period. In the first two subperiods the number of countries is smaller than nine either because some of the central banks have not been created yet, or due to lack of
data. For some of the countries Jacome and Vazquez provide a coding for the eighties as well. In those cases the figures used are averages between their codings and
those of Cukierman, Webb and Neyapti for the eighties.
behaviorally oriented proxies have therefore been used. One, used only for developing countries, is the actual, as opposed to the
legally mandated, turnover of CB governors and the other is a proxy for the political vulnerability of the CB governor. This index is
defined as the frequency of cases in which the governor is replaced within a short period of time following a political transition.8
None of those indices fully represents the actual independence of the CB. But, taken together, they provide a more complete picture
of differences in CBI across countries and over time.
2.1.1. Legal independence
There is mounting evidence that the legal independence of most central banks in the world has increased during the nineties to
an extent that appears to be a veritable revolution in central bank legislation. This is particularly remarkable in view of the fact that
during the forty years ending in 1989 there had hardly been reforms in CB legislation. This statement is based on a number of legal
indices, the most comprehensive of which are those in chapter 19 of Cukierman (1992) and in Cukierman et al. (1992), on updates
and extensions of these indices for some subgroups of countries and on updates of the Grilli et al. (1991) index.9 The Cukierman
et al. (1992) index has been updated for twenty-six former socialist economies for the decade of the nineties by Cukierman et al.
(2002). A somewhat broader index for twenty-four Latin American and Caribbean countries was recently developed by Jacome and
Vazquez (2008-this issue).10 The Grilli, Masciandro and Tabellini index has been reconstructed for a sample of over forty countries
for two points in time; 1991 and the end of 2003 by Arnone et al. (2006).
In spite of some differences in coverage, definitions and the fact that not all indices have been updated for all countries, the broad
picture that emerges is that legal independence took a quantum upward jump during the nineties. The most direct evidence for this
appears in the Arnone et al. (2006) paper that provides data for both 1991 and 2003. In addition, comparison of legal independence
of the CB in the former socialist economies with that of developed economies in the eighties by Cukierman et al. (2002) shows a
substantially higher level of independence in the former group. Interestingly, Table 2 in that paper suggests that in about a third of
the former socialist economies legal independence in the nineties was higher than the legal independence of the highly
independent Bundesbank during the eighties. In line with the Maastricht Treaty the legal independence of the Bundesbank has also
been upgraded since the eighties, along with that of all the countries that joined the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).
8 The turnover variable was originally introduced in chapter 19 of Cukierman (1992) and in Cukierman et al. (1992). de Haan and Kooi (2000) and Dreher et al.
(2007) have updated this index and extended it to a wider sample of countries. The index of political vulnerability appears in Cukierman and Webb (1995).
9 This index is based on a coding of sixteen different characteristics of CB charters that pertain to the allocation of authority over monetary policy, procedures
for resolution of conflicts between the CB and government, the relative importance of price stability in CB objectives as stated in the law, the seriousness of
limitations on lending by the CB to government, and procedures for the appointment and dismissal of the governor of the CB. Cukierman et al. (1992) present a
weighted index of those sixteen characteristics (LVAW) and Cukierman (1992) presents an unweighted version of the same characteristics (LVAU). Both indices
refer to a sample of over sixty countries.Other indices that appeared till the beginning of the nineties such as those used by Bade and Parkin (1988), Alesina (1988,
1989), Alesina and Summers (1993), Grilli et al. (1991) and Eijffinger and Schaling (1993) can, for the most part, be approximated by subsets of the components of
the LVAW (or of the LVAU) index.
10 The additional features included in the Jacome-Vazquez index involve procedures for appointment and dismissal of the entire CB board rather than just the
governor, the extent to which the CB has a say with respect to exchange-rate policy, the obligations of the CB as a lender of last resort, the existence of provisions
for the preservation of CB capital and the existence of legal provisions relating to the accountability and transparency of the CB.

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Fig. 2. The evolution of legal independence in six Former Socialist Economies. Remarks: The figure shows the average value of the LVAW index (see remark to
Fig. 1 for details) for six Former Socialist Economies which were not part of the Soviet empire and had, consequently, central bank laws prior to the downfall of the
Soviet Union. The countries are Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia. The figure for period 1 reflects the average level of legal independence
in those countries prior to the central bank reforms of the nineties. The figure for period 2 reflects the average level of legal independence in those countries after
the last central bank reform those countries had between the early nineties and 1997. Source: adapted from Table 1 of Cukierman et al. (2002).
To illustrate the revolution in the level of legal independence during the nineties, Fig. 1 shows the evolution of average legal
independence in nine Latin American countries during the last fifty years of the twentieth century. The figure combines data from
Cukierman et al. (1992) with updated data from Jacome and Vazquez (2008-this issue). The main lesson from the figure is that,
after thirty to forty years of relative immobility in CB legislation, there was a quantum jump in the level of legal independence in
those countries.
A similar picture emerges for the subset of former socialist economies that had separate central banks prior to the downfall of
the Soviet Union (Fig. 2). The legal reforms they instituted, mainly in the early nineties, represent about a tripling of the LVAW
index developed in Cukierman et al. (1992). Eight of the former socialist economies had two CB reforms during the nineties at
intervals of about five years. Fig. 1 in that article shows that the levels of independence embedded in second CB laws are
substantially higher than those of the first CB laws.
Examination of more detailed information in these and other sources suggests that the trends illustrated by those figures reflect
a worldwide trend toward substantially higher levels of CB independence. Moreover, the fact that the second CB law in Former
Socialist Economies that had two CB reforms reflects a uniformly higher level of independence than the first law, supports the view
that the trend toward legal independence intensified during the nineties. Those conclusion are corroborated by recent updates of
the Grilli et al. (1991) index of CBI produced by Arnone et al. (2006). They update this 1991 index for 18 developed economies, 9
emerging economies and 4 developing countries for legislation outstanding as of the end of 2003. Their index is standardized, as in
the Cukierman et al. (1992) index to the zero-one range. They find that the mean levels of legal independence in those three groups
of countries rose, respectively, from 0.476, 0.313 and 0.341 in 1991 to 0.774, 0.646 and 0.636 in 2003 (Table 10).
2.1.2. Actual independence and some illustrations of discrepancies between actual and legal independence
Have there also been meaningful changes in the actual level of CBI as proxied by the actual turnover of CB governors and by the
index of political vulnerability of the CB during the nineties? Dreher et al. (2007) update and extend the turnover data set to 137
countries. Comparison of this data set with the earlier data from Cukierman (1992) and Cukierman et al. (1992) should, in principle,
make it possible to examine whether high turnover rates in developing countries are lower today than in the past.11 Although such
a comparison has not been done explicitly, casual evidence for Latin American countries — in which turnover and the political
vulnerability of the CB were among the highest in the world till the end of the eighties — points to a substantial increase in
independence as proxied by both of those indices.
In addition to legal status, actual independence depends on various formal and informal institutional arrangements such as the
type of exchange-rate regime, the ability of the bank to engage effectively in open market operations, the stance of fiscal policy and
the existence of explicit institutional arrangements beyond the law that make the price stability objective a recognized (mainly by
the political establishment) objective of the CB. A prominent example of the latter is the various inflation targeting methods
adopted by about twenty countries since this innovation was pioneered at the end of the eighties in New Zealand and Canada.
Cukierman (2007a) constructs a judgmental index of actual CBI for the Bank of Israel since its creation in 1954 which takes the
factors above and several others into consideration. Comparison of this index of actual independence with its legal counterpart
suggests that, in spite of relatively limited changes in legal independence, there have been substantial changes in the actual
independence of the Bank following the stabilization of high inflation in 1985. In particular, while actual independence was
11 Dreher et al. (2007) focus on the impact of political instability, elections and inflation on the probability that a CB governor is replaced rather than on the
evolution of turnover over time.

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substantially lower prior to, and several years following the 1985 stabilization, the relation between those two types of
independence has been permanently reversed since the mid-nineties.
Till the 1985 inflation stabilization one of the main tasks of the Bank of Israel was to channel and extend credits to various
sectors of the economy. This was done through an elaborate system of directed credits to various sectors of the economy. The Bank
had relatively little influence on the size, the composition and the terms of those credits. Moreover, due to other institutional
restrictions, the Bank's ability to conduct effective open market operations was severely limited. In addition the capital market was
highly segmented and dominated by non-competitive elements. The combination of those factors seriously impeded the actual
ability of the Bank to focus on the price stability objective.
The main factors responsible for increases in the actual independence of the Bank of Israel in the post-1985 stabilization period
(in spite of a relatively immobile charter) were: a gradual reduction, mostly through attrition, of directed credits; a gradual lifting
(until their complete elimination at the end of 2001) of restrictions limiting the Bank's ability to issue short-term securities for
monetary policy purposes; a gradual process of desegmentation of credit markets; a gradual process of lifting various controls on
capital flows; a gradual flexibilization of the exchange rate and its gradual replacement by inflation targets since December 1991.
Starting in the mid-nineties substantial increases in the short-term interest rate set by the Bank (in spite of public criticisms by the
Treasury and exporters) point to an increase in the relative effective emphasis on price stability. The Israeli experience suggests
that substantial changes in the actual independence of the Bank may occur without much change in legal independence.
A similar, but less dramatic, process occurred during the first half of the nineties at the Bank of England. Due to changes in
monetary policymaking institutions at the end of 1992 the actual independence of the Bank of England rose without any change in
CB legislation. Underlying this trend was the disappointing performance of monetary targets during the eighties and, in the early
nineties, the low credibility of Britain's commitment to the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) which led, in September 1992, to the
depreciation of the Pound Sterling (Bowen, 1995). The poor performance of those two alternative anchors — monetary stocks and
the exchange rate — convinced Chancellor Lamont to introduce an anchor based on a final rather than an intermediate target
leading to the introduction of inflation targets in the UK.
Although the final decision regarding the setting of short-term rates and of the inflation target remained in the hands of the
Chancellor, the new policy framework increased the involvement of the Bank of England in monetary policymaking. The Bank was
invited to participate at joint meetings with the Treasury in order to formulate and tender advice on interest rates to the Chancellor.
The prompt publication of those minutes made it possible for the Bank to quickly transmit its point of view to the public. To
effectively operate the new framework, the Bank was asked to produce forecasts of inflation under the assumption of unchanged
interest rates and to produce inflation reports that would explain the reasons for missed targets and convey the uncertainty about
the inflation forecast to the public.12 In addition, since November 1993, the Bank had some limited discretion about the timing of
implementation of the interest-rate decision made by the Chancellor. As a consequence of those institutional changes the actual
independence of the Bank of England increased already in the early nineties in spite of the fact that legal independence followed
only during the second half of the nineties.13
2.2. Why did CBI increase so much during the nineties?
The evidence surveyed in the previous section supports the conclusion that during the nineties there has been a worldwide
sustained increase in the levels of both legal and actual independence. This trend is due to a combination of global as well as of
regional factors. This subsection briefly reviews the main factors.14 Two main global factors underlie the trend toward higher CBI.
One is an increased worldwide quest for price stability triggered by the stagflation of the seventies and the dismal economic
performance of some high inflation countries, in Latin America and elsewhere. Contrary to the sixties and the seventies, the
accepted view during the eighties and the nineties became that inflation and the associated uncertainties retard growth. The
relatively good real performance of some low inflation countries like Germany and Japan till the eighties supported this view.
The second factor is globalization, the gradual dismantling of controls on capital flows and the associated widening of
international capital markets. Those processes reinforced the quest for price stability and raised the importance of CBI as a signal of
macroeconomic nominal responsibility to domestic and international investors. As argued by Maxfield (1998), this factor was
particularly important in developing countries whose political establishments were anxious to establish smooth access to
international capital markets. Relatedly, the IMF embraced the view that a high level of independence is a desirable institutional
feature and actively promoted CB reform in many developing economies through conditionality and other means. In addition the
intellectual revolution triggered by the KPBG inflation bias story helped cement a consensus that trying to use money to raise
output beyond its full information, flexible price, value is ineffective and only leads to socially harmful inflation.15 By offering a
relatively simple theory of the prisoner's dilemma aspects of the interaction between monetary policymakers and individuals in
12 Compared to a money stock target that may be only loosely related to inflation, an inflation target has the advantage that it focuses on the final objective of
policy. But, unlike sufficiently narrow monetary targets, inflation is less controllable. Some of the consequences of this tradeoff for monetary policy are discussed
in Cukierman (1995).
13 By contrast inflation targets in New Zealand were introduced, concurrently with a substantial upgrading of legal independence, in 1989. But they have not
been embedded in the Reserve Bank of New-Zealand law. The 1989 law only requires that the Governor and the Minister of Finance agree (in a Policy Target
Agreement) on some target or targets for monetary policy. This was done expressly because no one knew at the time whether the inflation targeting framework
would succeed in delivering price stability.
14 A more extensive but older discussion appears in Cukierman (1998).
15 KPBG stands for Kydland and Prescott (1977) and Barro and Gordon (1983).

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the economy, the inflation bias model provided academic credence for the claim that monetary policy should be delegated to a
sufficiently independent CB and helped spread this notion internationally.
Among the regional motives for increasing independence are: First, the breakdown of other institutions designed to safeguard
nominal stability like the European Monetary System (EMS) and the Bretton Wood System, intensified the search for alternative
institutions. Second, the good track record of the highly independent Bundesbank demonstrated that CBI can function as an
effective device for assuring nominal stability. Third, the acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty by the European Union and
Community implied that in order to conform with the Treaty many countries in the Union had to upgrade the independence of
their CB as a precondition for membership in EMU. The fact that such a stipulation was introduced in the Treaty in the first place is
related to the good record of the Bundesbank and to the central position of Germany within the Union. Fourth, after recent
successful stabilization of inflation, particularly in Latin America, policymakers were looking for institutional arrangements
capable of reducing the likelihood of high and persistent inflation in the future. In view of the experience available at the time,
raising CBI was a natural way to achieve this objective. Fifth, the upgrading of CBI and the creation of best practice Western-type
central banks in the former socialist countries were part of a more general attempt by these countries to create the institutional
framework needed for the orderly functioning of a market economy. The fact that many of these new central banks were granted
substantial de jure independence was no doubt motivated by evidence from the industrial economies suggesting that inflation and
legal independence are negatively related and that independence and growth are either positively related or unrelated (see next
subsection).
The discussion above still leaves open the question as to why did many countries choose to raise their commitment to price
stability by upgrading CBI rather than through other means such as unilateral pegs? This question is discussed in Subsection 3.4
within the context of choice of nominal anchor.
2.3. CBI and economic performance
This subsection briefly surveys existing evidence on the relation between CBI and economic performance in the areas of
inflation, growth, investment and the distributions of real and nominal rates of interest.
2.3.1. Inflation
The early evidence in Alesina and Summers (1993), Grilli et al. (1991), Cukierman (1992, ch. 19) and Cukierman et al. (1992),
suggests that, for the industrial economies, inflation and legal independence are negatively related. By contrast, in the group of
developing countries neither inflation nor growth is related to legal independence. This is most likely due to the fact that at least till
the early nineties there was hardly any link between actual and legal independence within this group of countries. When
behaviorally oriented proxies of independence such as the actual turnover of CB governors and the index of political vulnerability
are used, a negative relation between inflation and independence emerges within the group of developing countries as well
(Cukierman, 1992, ch. 19; Cukierman et al., 1992; Cukierman and Webb, 1995).
Using data on the legal independence of freshly created central banks in former socialist economies (FSE) during the nineties,
and controlling for cumulative liberalization, price decontrols and wars, Cukierman et al. (2002) find no relation between inflation
and legal independence during the initial stages of liberalization. However, once the process of privatization and liberalization of
domestic prices and of foreign trade becomes sufficiently large and sustained, a negative relation between inflation and legal
independence does emerge. A possible reason is that legal independence is enforced in practice only when the shift to a market
economy has become sufficiently important to induce the authorities to seriously engage in law enforcement.
For the Latin American and Caribbean countries during the nineties, and controlling for international inflation, banking crises
and the exchange-rate regime, Jacome and Vazquez (2008-this issue) find a negative relation between inflation and legal
independence. For a similar group of countries and time period Gutierrez (2003) finds that countries that entrench the legal
independence of the CB in the constitution have lower inflation than those that do not.
Is there a general lesson from these different empirical investigations? The evidence is consistent with the conclusion that
inflation and actual CBI are negatively related in both developed and developing countries. But the extent to which this basic
relation is also reflected as a negative relation between inflation and legal independence depends on several other factors such as
regard for the law and the degree of commitment to CBI as proxied, inter alia, by whether or not the CB charter is entrenched in the
constitution.
One may argue that the negative relation between independence and inflation arises because of reverse causality from inflation
to independence rather than from independence to inflation. It is hard to resolve this important question on the basis of existing
evidence. Using data on legal independence for the Latin American and Caribbean countries during the nineties Jacome and
Vazquez (2008-this issue) do not find evidence to support causality from legal independence to inflation. Closer examination of
their data suggests that in some cases, the stabilization of high inflation preceded the upgrading of legal CBI. This was the case in
Argentina, Peru and Nicaragua in the early nineties and in Brazil at the end of the nineties. In such cases inflation was initially quite
high and the stabilization was of the “cold turkey” type. In other Latin American countries like Columbia, Paraguay and El Salvador
legal CBI was granted during the disinflation process which then continued in a gradual fashion. In one case (Venezuela) inflation
actually accelerated after legal independence was upgraded in the early nineties.
Data from Cukierman et al. (2002) show that acceleration of inflation following the upgrading of legal CBI was quite common
during the early and mid-nineties in the Former Socialist Economies (FSE). This was the case following the first CB reform in
Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Mongolia, and in Croatia, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Latvia, and the Kyrgyz Republic.

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Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Mongolia had a second-round of CB reform from the mid-nineties on, after high inflation had been
largely stabilized. From that point on, low inflation persisted. More generally Cukierman et al. (2002) find that legal independence
in the FSE is associated with lower inflation only after the process of liberalization has gathered sufficient momentum. A possible
explanation for this finding is that law enforcement was relatively poor during the early stages of liberalization and as a
consequence legal independence did not translate into actual independence. This and other evidence support the view that CBI
functions reasonably well as an inflation prevention device. However, once high inflation has been allowed to develop CBI alone
does not always suffice for the restoration of price stability.16
What can be said about the direction of causality between behavioral proxies of CBI and inflation? Using governors' turnover as
a proxy for actual (lack of) independence Cukierman (1992, ch. 20, Section 7) finds evidence in favor of two-way causality between
turnover and inflation during the forty years ending in 1989. Dreher et al. (2007) produce more recent evidence suggesting that
causality runs from inflation to turnover.17
2.3.2. Growth, investment and the distribution of nominal and real rates of interest
For developed economies Grilli et al. (1991) found that real growth and CBI are unrelated. This led them to label CBI a “free
lunch”. Those results are corroborated in studies by Alesina and Summers (1993) and Cukierman et al. (1993).
For developing economies the last paper finds that, although there is no association between legal independence and the rate of
growth of per capita income, the association between growth and actual independence as proxied by the political vulnerability of
the CB and related measures of turnover has a positive impact on the rate of growth. More precisely, using data from the sixties to
the eighties and controlling, inter alia, for initial GDP, the change in terms of trade, initial primary and secondary enrollment ratios,
it is found that higher political vulnerability of the CB governor and related measures of turnover are negatively associated with per
capita growth.
For a subset of developing countries Cukierman et al. (1993) also find, in some cases, a similar negative impact of turnover on
the share of investment in GDP. A possible joint interpretation of the last two results is that, under weak central bankers, private
investments are lower reducing the long-run rate of growth.
Alesina and Summers (1993) and Cukierman et al. (1993) find that in developed economies the variability of both nominal and
real rates of interest is negatively associated with legal independence. The second paper also finds, for the decade of the eighties,
that the average real return to depositors was higher in developed economies with higher levels of legal independence.
For developing countries Cukierman et al. (1993) find that the variability of both nominal and real deposit rates of interest is
positively associated with the turnover of CB governors.
The broad conclusion from those findings is that the variabilities of both real and nominal rates of interest are lower, and that
the average real return to depositors is higher, in countries with higher levels of actual independence.
3. Remarks on disinflation and the changing structure of nominal anchors
3.1. “Cold turkey” versus gradual stabilizations and the role of the CB
During the last two decades many high inflation countries, the world over, stabilized inflation. Some of those stabilizations
were of the “shock” or “cold turkey” type and others were gradual. Some involved the ministry of finance and even the entire
government while others were implemented mainly by the CB. Two regularities appear to emerge from those experiences. First, by
and large, very high inflations at rates over one hundred percent were stabilized by using the first method whereas stabilizations of
inflation in the two-digit range were implemented gradually. Second, government involvement in the stabilization of high inflation
was usually larger when high inflations were stabilized whereas low inflations were stabilized mainly, or solely, by the CB.
Thus, the stabilization of low inflation by industrial countries following the oil shocks of the seventies was done gradually and
usually with relatively little involvement of the government. Similarly, the stabilization of low inflation in Chile since the beginning
of the nineties was done gradually mainly by the CB. By contrast the stabilization of high inflation in Bolivia, Argentina and Israel
during the eighties was of the cold turkey type and featured a substantial involvement of government. Interestingly, Israel went
through both types of stabilizations at different times. The cold turkey 1985 stabilization that permanently reduced inflation from
the three digit range to between ten and twenty percent per annum was led by government to the point that the minister of finance
and the prime minister were personally involved. On the other hand the next phase of stabilization, that took place over the decade
of the nineties and reduced inflation to the zero to two percent range, was done mainly by the CB in spite of occasional criticisms of
the bank's restrictive policy by the minister of finance.
In what follows I argue that those regularities are not accidental for two reasons. First, under high and persistent inflation the
public's belief in the seriousness of policymakers' commitment to price stability is likely to be substantially lower than under low
inflations, or using terminology borrowed from Barro (1986) and Cukierman and Liviatan (1991), the initial “reputation” of
policymakers is lower in the second case. Reputation is defined formally in those papers as the probability, β, that the public
attributes to the event that the policymaker in office intends to deliver the inflation target that he preannounces. When β equals
16 Using cross-sectional data from 11 EMU countries Vaubel shows that when a measure of the public's sensitivity to inflation is added to a regression of
inflation on legal independence, the first variable is negative and significant whereas legal independence is not significant.
17 Relatedly, de Haan and Kooi (2000) present evidence supporting the view that the relation between inflation and turnover is driven mainly by data from high
inflation countries.

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one, reputation is perfect, and when it is zero reputation is non-existent. In most real-life situations β is strictly between zero and
one. That is, policymakers have some reputation but it is not perfect.
The model captures imperfect reputation by assuming that the policymaker in office can be one of the following two exo-
genously given types: a dependable one who takes the inflation target as a commitment to set the policy instrument in a way that
will make inflation as near to the target as possible, and a weak type who mimics the announcement of his dependable
counterpart, but is not really committed, and is therefore subject to the classical KPBG inflation bias problem. Both types share an
identical objective function which increases in unexpected inflation and decreases in inflation. One can think of the dependable
type as a policymaker who feels that reputation is an important electoral asset whereas the weak (or opportunistic) policymaker
believes that reputation is a minor factor in his reelection prospects.
Cukierman (2000a,b) extends those frameworks to allow for imperfect control of inflation by policymakers. An important
consequence of imperfect control is that the opportunistic policymaker can engage in short-term discretionary policies without
being revealed as weak with probability one. In such an environment the public adjusts β gradually using Bayes rule. However,
when sufficiently extreme rates of inflation occur reputation takes a jump. In particular, following the realization of a sufficiently
high rate of inflation the policymaker loses all reputation, and following the realization of a sufficiently low rate of inflation he
establishes his credentials as being dependable with probability one. Both policymaker types aspire toward higher reputation
since the impact of the preannounced inflation target is higher when reputation is higher and this raises the value of their
objectives.
When in office, the dependable policymaker attempts to raise his reputation by announcing and implementing a sufficiently
low inflation target in order to increase the probability that his dependability will be subsequently revealed with probability one.
When in office, the weak policymaker attempts to preserve his existing reputation by mimicking his dependable counterpart in the
preannouncement of the target and by scaling down his planned inflation to a level below the one period discretionary rate. Thus,
the two policymakers have opposite incentives with respect to revelation of their identities. The dependable CB aspires to reveal
his type with probability one while the opportunistic policymaker tries to minimize the chances that his type will be revealed.
Even if he mimics his dependable counterpart in deeds, as well as in words for some time, the opportunistic type will ultimately
inflate at the high discretionary rate. As a consequence permanent stabilization of inflation is achieved only when a dependable
policymaker is in office.
Stabilization of inflation brings with it long-term benefits at the cost of abandoning short-term advantages associated with the
creation of unanticipated inflation under discretion. One can therefore think of the onset of a drive for stabilization as an increase in
the concern of policymakers for the future, relative to current objectives and model it as an increase in the (common to both types)
discount factor, δ. The framework above implies that when a dependable policymaker is in office and δ goes up, raising the
incentive to implement a stabilization, the type of stabilization chosen by the dependable type will depend on the initial level of
reputation. In particular, a shock treatment is more likely when initial reputation is sufficiently low and gradual stabilization is
more likely when it is sufficiently high (proposition 6 in Cukierman, 2000b).
The intuition underlying this result is the following. An increase in the discount factor makes the future more important and
induces both types, when in office, to inflate at lower rates. When reputation is sufficiently low the reduction in planned inflation
by the dependable type (D) is larger than the reduction in planned inflation by the weak type (W) because, at a low reputation, D
stands to gain relatively more from full separation than W stands to lose from it at the margin. As a consequence the probability of a
shock treatment after which D is clearly separated from his weak counterpart is higher than that of gradual stabilization. When
initial reputation is sufficiently high, W stands to lose relatively more than the reputation D stands to gain from full separation.
Hence, when the future becomes more important, W makes a relatively stronger effort to prevent full separation than the effort
made by D to establish his identity beyond any doubt. As a consequence, the probability of gradual stabilization is higher than that
of a shock treatment.
A second factor that affects the relative desirability of shock versus gradual stabilization under moderate versus high inflation is
related to the existence of nominal wage contracts and other temporary nominal rigidities. In particular, when initial inflation is
sufficiently high the structure of overlapping sticky wages and prices is very compressed. As a consequence the relative price
distortions associated with a shock treatment are relatively small. By contrast, when initial inflation is moderate the structure of
overlapping wage contracts and prices is spread out, making the relative price distortions associated with a shock treatment higher
and more persistent. Hence gradual stabilizations are relatively more attractive in this case.
Why do governments tend to be more heavily involved in the stabilization of high inflations whereas low inflations are
frequently stabilized mainly by the CB? There are several reasons. First, the root cause of high inflation is usually due to
government's fiscal imbalances and the need to finance them through seigniorage. In the presence of limited government access to
credit markets such needs often create high inflations (Bolivia in the first half of the eighties is an example). Since the root cause of
the problem resides in government's fiscal needs the solution must involve government.
Second, even when the root cause resides elsewhere, once high inflation has been allowed to develop, it is quite likely that
the CB alone will not be able to do the job for several reasons. In such cases, without a clear-cut demonstration of fiscal
responsibility by government, the low reputation of policymakers makes it extremely hard for the CB to convince the public
that a change in regime is around the corner. This is reinforced by the fact that during high inflation the independence of the CB
is low. In addition if, as was the case in countries like Chile and Israel, indexation is widespread at the outset and a shock
stabilization is implemented, some or all of the indexation arrangements have to be temporarily suspended. Clearly, actions of
this type are not within the arsenal of instruments of the CB. They require, instead, the involvement of government and other
groups like labor unions.

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3.2. Changes in the transmission process in the aftermath of successful stabilizations
Although they are desirable, successful stabilizations temporarily complicate the conduct of monetary policy. The reason is that
such stabilizations induce changes in the transmission process of monetary policy through a variety of channels. Wages and prices
become more sticky, the degrees of informal and formal indexation go down and the pass-through coefficient and dollarization go
down as well. All those phenomena have taken place in Israel following the success of inflation targeting in reducing inflation to
the current standards of Europe and the US. Schmidt-Hebbel (2004) documents similar trends for Chile.
Those changes lead to a lengthening of the transmission of monetary impulses to inflation and the real effects of monetary policy
become more persistent. Since they raise the ability of monetary policy to affect output and employment, those are desirable
developments. On the other hand, those structural changes make pre-disinflation knowledge about the precise magnitudes of the
coefficients of the transmission mechanism somewhat obsolete and raise the CB uncertainty concerning the structure of the
economy. As a consequence, during several years following successful stabilizations, monetary policymakers are forced to rely more
heavily on various judgmental procedures and on a larger amount of relatively partial signals about the impact of monetary policy.
3.3. The inflation target, asymmetric CB objectives and non-linear reaction functions
During the last decade much of the academic research dealing with CB reaction functions has been cast in terms of Taylor rules.
For the most part these rules assume that the CB loss function is quadratic in the output gap and in the deviation of inflation from
its target.18 This formulation leads to nice linear reaction functions and implies that the CB treats losses from being above and being
below target with respect to both inflation and output in a symmetric manner. In the absence of uncertainty about future shocks
possible asymmetries in losses do not matter. However, when it is recognized that real-life central banks are uncertain about future
shocks when they pick their policy instruments, the shape of the objective function over the entire possible range of losses
becomes important.
After a period as vice-chairman of the Fed, Blinder (1998, pp. 19, 20) suggests that “… in most situations the CB will take far
more political heat when it tightens preemptively to avoid higher inflation than when it eases preemptively to avoid higher
unemployment.” Although the Fed enjoys a fair amount of actual independence, it is not totally insensitive to the reactions of the
political establishment and the public. It is therefore likely that, in making policy decisions, the Fed may weight losses from
negative output gaps more heavily than losses (if any) from positive output gaps. Cukierman (2000a) formalizes this asymmetry by
postulating that the CB is concerned with losses arising from negative output gaps but is indifferent to the size of the gap as long as
it is positive and shows that, in such a case, there will be an inflation bias even if the bank aims at achieving potential output on
average. Using cross-sectional data from industrial economies Cukierman and Gerlach (2003) find support for this theory. Using a
more general specification of asymmetric output gap objectives, Ruge-Murcia (2003) finds that such a specification fits the
behavior of US inflation better than the traditional Barro and Gordon (1983) model which relies on quadratic objectives.
It might appear, at first blush, that there should be no reason for asymmetries in losses from the discrepancies between inflation
and the inflation target (briefly — “the inflation gap”). However in periods of gradual disinflation, in which the CB is anxious to
establish a reputation for being committed to the target, it may be more apprehensive of positive than of negative inflation gaps.
Hence during such periods the bank may follow policies which make it more likely that the inflation target will be missed from
below than from above. Interestingly, during the gradual Israeli disinflation at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the
twenty-first century, the Bank of Israel missed the target many more times from below than from above.19 A similar phenomenon
occurred in the UK during the inflation targeting period.
Essentially, asymmetries in losses from inflation and output gaps reflect inflation avoidance and recession avoidance on the part
of the CB with respect to those gaps. Such motives generally lead to non-linear Taylor rules. Cukierman and Muscatelli (2008)
investigate the consequences of asymmetric preferences within a New-Keynesian framework of the type suggested by Clarida et al.
(2000) and test for the existence of non-linearities in the interest-rate reaction functions of the US and the UK.
In times of stable inflation, as is the case in the US since the mid-eighties, recession avoidance preferences may dominate. In
times of inflation stabilization, due to reputational considerations, inflation avoidance preferences may dominate. In the presence
of both avoidance motives the reaction function may still be linear because the two motives affect the conventional linear Taylor
rule in opposite directions. Recession avoidance alone tends to make the Taylor rule concave in both gaps, and inflation avoidance
alone tends to make it convex in both gaps. Hence, in the presence of both motives, the Taylor rule is non-linear if one of those
motives dominates the other.
Cukierman and Muscatelli (2008) develop a criterion for finding the dominant avoidance motive and apply it to the UK and the
US. They find evidence supporting the existence of asymmetric CB objectives in most periods as well as substantial over-time
variations in the identity of the dominant avoidance motive in both countries. In particular, the period between the end of the
seventies and 1990 in the UK is characterized by a dominant recession avoidance motive. By contrast, since the introduction of
inflation targets in 1992, the UK reaction function is characterized by a dominant inflation avoidance motive. In the US there is
evidence of a dominant inflation avoidance motive during the (Vietnam war) inflationary buildup under McChesney–Martin. But
18 See, for example, Taylor (1999) and, for Latin America, Loayza and Schmidt-Hebbel (2002).
19 This even led some critics of the Bank to claim that the Bank was aiming at an inflation target that was lower than the one assigned to it by government
(Sussman, 2007).

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