A structuralist theory of central bank independence

Eduardo Zambrano

Economics Bulletin, 2014, vol. 34, issue 4, 2190-2200

Abstract: Can a heterodox economist find arguments in favor of Central Bank independence? Economists currently favor arguments in favor of Central Bank independence based on Barro-Gordon (1983 a,b), a very ‘orthodox' model. Consequently, those who view the economic orthodoxy with suspicion tend to question Central Bank independence. I argue that Central Bank independence can be beneficial even in a very ‘structuralist' economy: one in which workers are unionized, firms are cartelized and inflation arises as the result of distributive struggles among capitalists and workers. This is so because it is the time-inconsistency issue, and not the structure of the economy, that which generates the inflation bias that Central Bank independence is set to eliminate.

Keywords: Central Bank Independence; Inflation Bias; Structuralist Theories of Inflation; Distributive Struggles. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B5 E5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10-24
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2014/Volume34/EB-14-V34-I4-P200.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-14-00761

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().