Oxford Economic Papers articles from July 1998

Oxford Economic Papers archives from July 1998

Central bank independence - conceptual clarifications and interim assessment.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. The advocacy of independence Support for central bank independence - usually derived from concern over problems of time inconsistent policy - became widespread in the late 1980s. This may be due to the wide publicisation by Alesina (1988,...

Central bank independence and disinflationary credibility: a missing link?(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction Central bank independence is rapidly becoming the worldwide norm for the organization of monetary authorities. A remarkably broad consensus of academics and policymakers, conservatives and liberals, have rallied around the...

Institutional checks and balances and the political control of the money supply.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction Incumbent policy-makers may have incentives to expand the money supply prior to elections to stimulate the economy and thereby increase their chances of re-election (Nordhaus, 1975). Electoral cycles in the money supply could...

Time inconsistency in a model with lags, persistence, and overlapping wage contracts.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction Game theoretic models of time inconsistency within the monetary policy field have been such a fertile and fruitful area in recent years, partly because they have the good features of simplicity and tractability. Nevertheless...

The trade off between central bank independence and conservativeness.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction This paper deals with the following fundamental question. It tries to explain the optimal degree of central bank independence and conservativeness by four economic and political determinants (the natural rate of unemployment,...

Political consensus, uncertain preferences and central bank independence.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction Early approaches to central bank independence were based around simple models of unconditional delegation (see for example Rogoff, 1985). The standard Rogoff model of delegation shows that, whilst it pays society to appoint...

Inflation targeting as a way of precommitment.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction Over the last decade, the relation between the central bank's institutional status and the characteristics of monetary policy has received considerable attention, both theoretically and empirically; for recent reviews, see...

Cost of separating budgetary policy from control of inflation: a neglected aspect of central bank independence.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction The Bank of England became independent within a few days of the 1997 General Election. This means that, in principle the UK's monetary policy is set independently of its fiscal policy. There may be some informal discussion...

Measuring central bank independence: a tale of subjectivity and of its consequences.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction The idea that granting formal independence to a Central Bank (CB) is a way to improve its country's (or region's) inflationary performance is currently enjoying considerable popularity. The statutes of the European Central...

Budget deficits, monetization, and central bank independence in developing countries.(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction Recently many researchers have investigated the relationship between central bank independence and various macroeconomic variables (see Eijffinger and De Haan, 1996, for a survey). Although most studies focus on the...

Assessing central bank independence in developing countries: do actions speak louder than words?(Special Issue on the Economics of Central Bank Independence)
July 1, 1998... 1. Introduction In the developing countries where I have worked, the fiscal situation usually dominates other areas of macroeconomic policy, including exchange rate and monetary policies.(1) In this paper, I test the hypothesis that the...