After the Financial Crisis, What Should a Model Central Bank Look Like?
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Central Bank Independence Revisited: After the financial crisis, what should a model central bank look like? Ed Balls, James Howat, Anna Stansbury April 2018 M-RCBG Associate Working Paper Series | No. 87 The views expressed in the M-RCBG Associate Working Paper Series are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government or of Harvard University. The papers in this series have not undergone formal review and approval; they are presented to elicit feedback and to encourage debate on important public policy challenges. Copyright belongs to the author(s). Papers may be downloaded for personal use only. Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government Weil Hall | Harvard Kennedy School | www.hks.harvard.edu/mrcbg MR- CBG WORKING PAPER April 2018 Central Bank Independence Revisited: After the financial crisis, what should a model central bank look like? Ed Balls Research Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University & Visiting Professor, King’s College London James Howat John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Anna Stansbury John F Kennedy School of Government & Economics Department, Harvard University An earlier version of this paper was published in September 2016 as a working paper by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University. It was largely written during Ed’s term as Senior Fellow at the M-RCBG, during which James was an MPP student and before Anna began her PhD course. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a Harvard-wide panel event on 27th March 2017, at the Feldstein-Friedman Macroeconomic Policy Seminar in the Department of Economics, Harvard University on 1st March 2016 and to the Senior Fellows Meeting at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School in February 2016. The ideas in the paper were discussed at the Bank of England “Twenty Years On” conference in September 2017 and in Ed Balls’ response to the annual Wincott lecture delivered by Sir Charles Bean, November 2017. The authors are grateful to Shasha Mohd Rizdam Deva, Jon Newton, Alexander Harris and Nyasha Weinberg for help with the case studies and Larry Summers, Alberto Alesina, Tim Geithner, Martin Feldstein and Ben Friedman, Andrei Shleifer, Michael Walton, Christopher Crowe, Chris Giles, Charles Goodhart, Jens Henriksson, Donato Masciandaro, Kevin O’Rourke, Minouche Shafik, Alan Taylor, Sir Nicholas MacPherson, Sir Charlie Bean and Andy Halden, for support and comments. All comments are gratefully received. 1 Summary After the financial crisis, countries around the world significantly expanded the objectives and powers of central banks. As central banks have acquired more powers, the trade-off between independence and accountability has become more complex and as a result, the pre-crisis academic consensus around central bank independence has broken down. Popular discontent towards central banks is growing. A new model of central bank independence is needed. We first investigate the traditional case for central bank independence. Extending work from the 1980s and 1990s to the present, we show that operational independence of central banks – the ability to choose an instrument to achieve inflation goals - has been associated with significant improvements in price stability. But in advanced economies at least, political independence – the absence of the possibility for politicians to influence central bank goals or personnel – has not been correlated with inflationary outcomes. This suggests that central banks in advanced economies can sacrifice some political independence without undermining the operational independence that is important in both their monetary policy and financial stability functions. In light of this distinction between political and operational independence, we then evaluate the new powers that central banks have taken on over recent years, focusing on advanced economies. We develop a framework which examines how to maximize the benefits of locating new powers inside the central bank, while minimizing potential conflicts with monetary policy and limiting political threats to the legitimacy of central banks’ operational independence. Based on this framework, we recommend a set of principles to guide central bank structural reform. First, we recommend the institution of formal monetary-fiscal coordination mechanisms, provided that they are limited to the zero lower bound, triggered by the central bank and protect democratic control over fiscal policy. Second, we recommend that systemic risk oversight and prioritization is carried out by a multi-member body comprising the central bank and financial regulators and chaired by government, but that macro-prudential policy- making is operationally independent from government. Third, we recommend that crisis management efforts are led by government, but that there should be few restrictions on central bank liquidity provision. Finally, we argue that there is a case for and against the central bank as bank supervisor, but that the central bank should not be responsible for policing financial conduct. Viewed in light of our framework, no single country has yet settled the question about how a modern central bank should be structured. The approach taken by major economies all have strengths and weaknesses: they would benefit from learning from each other. For example, in the US, the central bank lacks the macro-prudential tools required to fight risks to the country’s financial stability. The US should learn from the Bank of England’s more expansive macro- prudential toolkit and the mechanism that the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee has in place to request new powers from the government. The UK should also look to the US for lessons. After the centralisation of prudential regulation – both of the micro and macro variety – and systemic risk monitoring inside the Bank of England, there is a danger that the UK money-credit constitution is too concentrated in the central bank, leading to the possibility of groupthink, a lack of oversight and ultimately political risks to central bank independence. In Europe, the ECB has made progress building up its macro-prudential toolkit. But it still lacks powers to influence the non-bank financial sector and this macro-prudential policy capacity is fractured across several different institutions without effective 2 oversight, a concern for political accountability especially in a union representing many different countries and political systems. In the US, the UK and the Eurozone over recent years, there have been calls to reduce or eradicate central bank independence from both politicians and the public. But we are clear that this is no time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We do argue for a more nuanced approach to central bank independence, with political accountability in terms of mandate-setting and appointment of officials, and oversight of wider financial stability powers. Nonetheless, we reiterate that the case for operational independence in both monetary and macro-prudential policy is strong: to retreat on this now would be a serious mistake. 3 1. Introduction Prior to the financial crisis, a consensus had developed around the model of an ideal central bank: independent from government, with a focus on price stability through an inflation target1, with primary responsibility for moderating macroeconomic fluctuations. This consensus was supported by theoretical and empirical evidence demonstrating that central bank independence was important in reducing inflation without a negative impact on growth or employment. Central banks in advanced and emerging economies converged upon this model of central bank independence, and in many countries, central banks’ traditional responsibilities for financial supervision and stability were relocated to separate institutions to enable to central bank to focus on its core monetary policy responsibility. In the wake of the global financial crisis, however, this model of a central bank is being challenged. In the US, Congress only narrowly rejected Senator Rand Paul’s “Audit the Fed” plan to curtail the Federal Reserve’s independence. President Trump has criticized the Federal Reserve’s decisions and its independence, and broke with precedent in not re-appointing Fed Chair Janet Yellen to a second term, replacing her with new Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The opposition Labour Party in the UK launched a review of the Bank of England and its leader Jeremy Corbyn previously called for a “People’s QE” to force it to fund public projects. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has also come under criticism from senior Conservative politicians. The ECB has been criticized by senior Eurozone politicians including most notably the then German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. It has been alleged that governments in Brazil and India have recently tried to curtail the independence of their central banks. Challenges to the pre-crisis consensus do not just come from politics. Even mainstream academic voices have begun breaking long-held taboos by calling for monetary financing of governments (“helicopter money”), scrapping inflation targeting, and questioning the value of central bank independence. This backlash reflects important shortcomings in the traditional model of a central bank. The crisis demonstrated that a focus on price stability alone is too narrow: effective macroeconomic policy