Original Research
On the meaning of central bank independence
South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences | Vol 1, No 2 | a1879 |
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/sajems.v1i2.1879
| © 2019 G. M. Wessels
| This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 25 April 2024 | Published: 30 June 1998
Submitted: 25 April 2024 | Published: 30 June 1998
About the author(s)
G. M. Wessels, Department of Money and Banking, Free State University, South AfricaFull Text:
PDF (651KB)Abstract
This article aims to clarify the meaning of the multifaceted term central bank independence. Such independence cannot be understood in an absolute sense, because the elected government in a democratic society remains the highest authority in respect of economic policy-making too. Nevertheless, central banks globally are currently endowed with strong relative independence. This may be separated into two broad categories, namely formal and informal independence. Political and economic independence are identified as elements of the former, and their various subcategories are expounded below. Informal independence is then highlighted as the more important component of independence, of which personalities, professionalism and public support are crucial. However, an ideal combination of the determinants of independence is hard to find.
Keywords
No related keywords in the metadata.
Metrics
Total abstract views: 1451Total article views: 412