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

Capital structure theory and practice

Jonah Whanau

2022-03-15 10:32:00 Tuesday ET

Capital structure theory and practice

Capital structure theory and practice  The genesis of modern capital structure theory traces back to the seminal work of Modigliani and Miller (1958

+See More

Netflix has an unsustainable business model in the meantime.

Becky Berkman

2019-05-02 13:30:00 Thursday ET

Netflix has an unsustainable business model in the meantime.

Netflix has an unsustainable business model in the meantime. Netflix maintains a small premium membership fee of $9-$14 per month for its unique collection

+See More

President Trump blames the Federal Reserve for its *crazy tight* interest rate hike.

Becky Berkman

2018-10-13 10:44:00 Saturday ET

President Trump blames the Federal Reserve for its *crazy tight* interest rate hike.

Dow Jones tumbles 3% or 831 points while NASDAQ tanks 4%, and this negative investor sentiment rips through most European and Asian stock markets in early-O

+See More

Federal Reserve confirms that all of the 34 major banks pass their annual CCAR macro stress tests.

Apple Boston

2017-05-31 06:36:00 Wednesday ET

Federal Reserve confirms that all of the 34 major banks pass their annual CCAR macro stress tests.

The Federal Reserve rubber-stamps the positive conclusion that all of the 34 major banks pass their annual CCAR macro stress tests for the first time since

+See More

President Trump picks David Malpass to run the World Bank to curb international multilateralism.

Rose Prince

2019-02-07 07:25:00 Thursday ET

President Trump picks David Malpass to run the World Bank to curb international multilateralism.

President Trump picks David Malpass to run the World Bank to curb international multilateralism. The Trump administration seems to prefer bilateral negotiat

+See More

The U.S. further derisks and decouples from China.

Peter Prince

2023-05-31 03:15:40 Wednesday ET

The U.S. further derisks and decouples from China.

The U.S. further derisks and decouples from China.   Why does the U.S. seek to further economically decouple from China? In recent times, th

+See More