Central banks are among the most powerful government economic institutions in the world. This volume explores the economic and political contours of the struggle for influence over the policies of central banks such as the Federal Reserve, and the implications of this struggle for economic performance and the distribution of wealth and power in society.
Central banks can shape economic growth, affect income distribution, influence a country's foreign relations, and determine the extent of its democracy. While there is considerable literature on the political economy of central banking in OECD countries, this is the first book-length study focused on central banking in emerging market countries. Surveying the dramatic worldwide trend toward increased central bank independence in the 1990s, the book argues that global forces must be at work. These forces, the book contends, center on the character of international financial intermediation. Going beyond an explanation of central bank independence, Sylvia Maxfield posits a general framework for analyzing the impact of different types of international capital flows on the politics of economic policymaking in developing countries. The book suggests that central bank independence in emerging market countries does not spring from law but rather from politics. As long as politicians value them, central banks will enjoy independence. Central banks are most likely to be independent in developing countries when politicians desire international creditworthiness. Historical analyses of central banks in Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Thailand, and quantitative analyses of a larger sample of developing countries corroborate this investor signaling explanation of broad trends in central bank status.
The economic influence of central banks has received ever more attention given their centrality during the financial crises that led to the Great Recession, strains in the European Union, and the challenges to the Euro. The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Central Banking reflects the state of the art in the theory and practice and covers a wide range of topics that will provide insight to students, scholars, and practitioners. As an up to date reference of the current and potential challenges faced by central banks in the conduct of monetary policy and in the search for the maintenance of financial system stability, this Oxford Handbook covers a wide range of essential issues. The first section provides insights into central bank governance, the differing degrees of central bank independence, and the internal dynamics of their decision making. The next section focuses on questions of whether central banks can ameliorate fiscal burdens, various strategies to affect monetary policy, and how the global financial crisis affected the relationship between the traditional focus on inflation targeting and unconventional policy instruments such as quantitative easing (QE), foreign exchange market interventions, negative interest rates, and forward guidance. The next two sections turn to central bank communications and management of expectations and then mechanisms of policy transmission. The fifth part explores the challenges of recent developments in the economy and debates about the roles central banks should play, focusing on micro- and macro-prudential arguments. The implications of recent developments for policy modeling are covered in the last section. The breadth and depth enhances understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing central banks.
This book examines the local and global political and institutional processes that have led to the strengthening of the Israeli central bank within the context of the now predominant neoliberal regime. Using Israel as a case study to identify broader patterns around the world, the authors examine the strengthening of central banks as a key dimension of the institutionalisation of the global regime. Drawing on an in-depth analysis of the political economy of the Israeli central bank since the mid-1980s, the authors show how the Bank of Israel mobilized global logics in order to strengthen its position vis-à-vis competing actors, especially the Ministry of Finance, and to promote the institutionalisation of the neoliberal regime. Employing a conflict-centered theoretical perspective, the authors elucidate the character of this institutional transformation and the mechanisms that were involved. Chapters examine the different phases of the process of central bank strengthening, focusing on the actors involved, the interactions between them, and the political strategies they employed, and analyse the consequences of the process for the shift in macro-economic management and in the mode of state involvement in the economy. Addressing the political and institutional processes that have led to the fundamental transformation of Israeli political economy, this book is a valuable addition to the existing literature on the Israeli banking system, political economy and globalisation.
Theories and practices in central banking and monetary policy have changed radically over recent decades with independence and inflation targeting as the new keywords. This book offers interesting perspectives on the drivers of this development and its implication. It addresses contemporary questions on accountability, transparency and objectives for monetary policy as well as current policy problems related to globalization and financial imbalances. The book is topical, insightful and well written a must for everybody with an interest in central banking and monetary policy. Torben M. Andersen, University of Aarhus, Denmark The number of central banks in the world is approaching 180, a tenfold increase since the beginning of the twentieth century. What lies behind the spread of this economic institution? What underlying process has brought central banks to hold such a key role in economic life today? This book examines from a transatlantic perspective how the central bank has become the bank of banks. Thirteen distinguished economists and central bankers have been brought together to evaluate how central banks work, arrive at their policies, choose their instruments and gauge their success in managing economies, both in times of crisis and periods of growth. Central banks have gained greater independence from government control over the last 20 years. This widespread trend throws up new questions regarding the foundations, prerogatives and future of this economic institution. This book provides a better understanding of the current financial crisis through the in-depth study of the central bank. Researchers in the fields of monetary theory, monetary policy and central banking will find this volume of great interest. It will also appeal to students of economics, political economy, banking and finance, as well as economists, academics, and public policy advisers and analysts.
Government bailouts; negative interest rates and markets that do not behave as economic models tell us they should; new populist and nationalist movements that target central banks and central bankers as a source of popular malaise; new regional organizations and geopolitical alignments laying claim to authority over the global economy; households, consumers, and workers facing increasingly intolerable levels of inequality: These dramatic conditions seem to cry out for new ways of understanding the purposes, roles, and challenges of central banks and financial governance more generally. Financial Citizenship reveals that the conflicts about who gets to decide how central banks do all these things, and about whether central banks are acting in everyone’s interest when they do them, are in large part the product of a culture clash between experts and the various global publics that have a stake in what central banks do. Experts—central bankers, regulators, market insiders, and their academic supporters—are a special community, a cultural group apart from many of the communities that make up the public at large. When the gulf between the culture of those who govern and the cultures of the governed becomes unmanageable, the result is a legitimacy crisis. This book is a call to action for all of us—experts and publics alike—to address this legitimacy crisis head on, for our economies and our democracies.
Priests of Prosperity explores the unsung revolutionary campaign to transform postcommunist central banks from command-economy cash cows into Western-style monetary guardians. Juliet Johnson conducted more than 160 interviews in seventeen countries with central bankers, international assistance providers, policymakers, and private-sector finance professionals over the course of fifteen years. She argues that a powerful transnational central banking community concentrated in Western Europe and North America integrated postcommunist central bankers into its network, shaped their ideas about the role of central banks, and helped them develop modern tools of central banking. Johnson's detailed comparative studies of central bank development in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan take readers from the birth of the campaign in the late 1980s to the challenges faced by central bankers after the global financial crisis. As the comfortable certainties of the past collapse around them, today’s central bankers in the postcommunist world and beyond find themselves torn between allegiance to their transnational community and its principles on the one hand and their increasingly complex and politicized national roles on the other. Priests of Prosperity will appeal to a diverse audience of scholars in political science, finance, economics, geography, and sociology as well as to central bankers and other policymakers interested in the future of international finance, global governance, and economic development.
Central banks have become the go-to institution of modern economies. In the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, they injected trillions of dollars of liquidity – through a process known as quantitative easing – first to prevent financial meltdown and later to stimulate the economy. The untold story behind these measures, and behind the changing roles of central banks generally, is that they have come at a considerable cost. Central banks argue we had no choice. This book offers a powerfully original examination of why this claim is false. Using examples from Europe and the US, the authors present and analyse three specific concerns about the way central banks in developed economies operate today. Firstly, they show how unconventional monetary policies have created significant unintended negative consequences in terms of inequalities in income and wealth. They go on to argue that central banks may have become independent of governments, but have instead become worryingly dependent on financial markets. They then proceed to analyse how central bankers, despite being the undisputed experts on monetary policy, can still err and suffer from multiple forms of bias. This book is a sobering and urgent wake-up call for policy-makers and anyone interested in how our monetary and financial system really works.
