Central bank independence remains important for core inflation containment in the current age of political populism.

Jonah Whanau

2019-04-21 10:07:54 Sun ET

Central bank independence remains important for core inflation containment in the current age of political populism. In accordance with the dual mandate of both price stability and maximum sustainable employment, most central banks seek to solve the dynamic consistency problem on the basis of a key desire to insulate monetary policy decisions from political influence.

A landmark empirical study of cross-country comparisons by Alberto Alesina and Lawrence Summers confirms that countries with better central bank independence experience lower inflation without suffering any real economic output or labor force penalty. An independent central bank can enhance fiscal discipline by reducing the relative likelihood of fiscal dominance and monetization of perennial budget deficits.

Historical experience and economic theory teach us an informative lesson. When monetary policy is subject to political control, people expect dovish expansionary interest rate adjustments and so anticipate higher wages and prices in response. The undesirable economic outcome is stagflation (or the worst-case scenario of both high inflation and high unemployment). It can cost prohibitive welfare losses for the central bank to bring down inflation with subsequent interest rate hikes. Key credible apolitical monetary policy decisions would thus promote price stability with minimal real impact on economic growth, employment, and capital investment.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Ben Horowitz shares many hard truths, setbacks, failures, obstacles, difficulties, and disappointments through his rare unique entrepreneurial journey at LoudCloud.

Laura Hermes

2025-05-29 08:25:28 Thursday ET

Ben Horowitz shares many hard truths, setbacks, failures, obstacles, difficulties, and disappointments through his rare unique entrepreneurial journey at LoudCloud.

Serial venture capitalist Ben Horowitz describes many hard truths, lessons, and insights from his entrepreneurial journey of running LoudCloud from a Silico

+See More

New York Fed CEO John Williams sees no need to raise the interest rate unless economic growth or inflation rises to a high gear.

Joseph Corr

2019-02-28 12:39:00 Thursday ET

New York Fed CEO John Williams sees no need to raise the interest rate unless economic growth or inflation rises to a high gear.

New York Fed CEO John Williams sees no need to raise the interest rate unless economic growth or inflation rises to a high gear. After raising the interest

+See More

A small fraction of the population enjoys most capital and wealth creation.

Jacob Miramar

2017-03-15 08:46:00 Wednesday ET

A small fraction of the population enjoys most capital and wealth creation.

The heuristic rule of *accumulative advantage* suggests that a small fraction of the population enjoys a large proportion of both capital and wealth creatio

+See More

AYA free finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube March 2019

Andy Yeh Alpha

2019-03-31 11:40:00 Sunday ET

AYA free finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube March 2019

AYA Analytica free finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube March 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of March 2019: (1) Sargent-Wallac

+See More

President Trump sounds smart when he comes up with a fresh plan to retire $15 trillion national debt.

Peter Prince

2018-08-07 07:33:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump sounds smart when he comes up with a fresh plan to retire $15 trillion national debt.

President Trump sounds smart when he comes up with a fresh plan to retire $15 trillion national debt. This plan entails taxing American consumers and produc

+See More

Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) uses large language models (LLM) to create online contents with better human productivity.

Monica McNeil

2024-10-31 09:26:00 Thursday ET

Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) uses large language models (LLM) to create online contents with better human productivity.

Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) uses large language models (LLM) and content generation tools to enhance human lives with better productivity.

+See More