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Central bank independence and inflation—Old story told anew
Author(s) -
Kokoszczyński Ryszard,
MackiewiczŁyziak Joanna
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of finance and economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1099-1158
pISSN - 1076-9307
DOI - 10.1002/ijfe.1730
Subject(s) - economics , inflation (cosmology) , independence (probability theory) , econometrics , panel data , estimator , generalized method of moments , monetary economics , statistics , mathematics , physics , theoretical physics
Central bank independence (CBI) and its link to inflation have become a part of conventional wisdom. However, the literature shows that there is a lack of a stable general pattern for the relation between CBI and inflation, even for relatively homogenous groups of countries. In this study, we use two indexes for CBI proposed in the literature. For the panel of 51 countries (24 advanced and 27 nonadvanced economies), we estimate two regression models—one with inflation as a dependent variable and another with inflation gap in this role. We use two estimation methods: the panel fixed effects model with serial autocorrelation in the error term and the Arellano‐Bond difference generalized method of moments estimator. In addition, we use disaggregated indices to check what aspects of independence are of highest importance. Our results suggest that CBI has a negative significant impact on inflation mostly by results for nonadvanced economies and that this relationship did not change during the recent crisis.