Bankers, Bureaucrats, and Central Bank Politics
The Myth of Neutrality

Adolph illustrates the policy differences between central banks run by former bankers relative to those run by bureaucrats.

Christopher Adolph (Author)

9781107032613, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 April 2013

390 pages, 53 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.5 cm, 0.78 kg

'Adolph has written a timely book for students of monetary policy, central banking, and comparative political economy. The main messages are accessible to a wide audience and have implications not only for economics, but also for law and sociology.' Anne-Caroline Hüser, International Journal of Constitutional Law

Most studies of the political economy of money focus on the laws protecting central banks from government interference; this book turns to the overlooked people who actually make monetary policy decisions. Using formal theory and statistical evidence from dozens of central banks across the developed and developing worlds, this book shows that monetary policy agents are not all the same. Molded by specific professional and sectoral backgrounds and driven by career concerns, central bankers with different career trajectories choose predictably different monetary policies. These differences undermine the widespread belief that central bank independence is a neutral solution for macroeconomic management. Instead, through careful selection and retention of central bankers, partisan governments can and do influence monetary policy - preserving a political trade-off between inflation and real economic performance even in an age of legally independent central banks.

1. Agents, institutions, and the political economy of performance
2. Career theories of monetary policy
3. Careers and inflation in industrial democracies
4. Careers and the monetary policy process
5. Careers and inflation in developing countries
6. The uses of autonomy: what independence really means
7. Partisan governments, labor unions, and monetary policy
8. The politics of central banker appointment
9. The politics of central banker tenure
10. Conclusion: the dilemma of discretion.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Monetary economics [KCBM], Macroeconomics [KCB], Comparative politics [JPB]