Six practical views of central bank transparency

Abstract

In the span of fifteen years, central bank transparency has gone from being highly controversial to an accepted broad goal to which all central banks pay at least lip service. Yet, like many other broad concepts in economic policy, what central bank transparency actually means remains rather open to debate. Recent monetary theory has been unsuccessful in providing clarity because it emphasizes the issue of discerning a central bank's type. In practice, central bank transparency has implications for a number of day-to-day issues. These include the persistence of inflation, the response of financial markets to central bank announcements, and the treatment of intermediate monetary targets - that is, central bank transparency influences the short-run dynamics of private-sector expectations. The evidence, in fact, is that the effect of greater transparency on these dynamics is beneficial. There is, however, a disturbing apparent disjunction between central bank transparency and accountability in reality. Recent developments in Japan and, to a lesser degree, in the United States and the eurozone have amply demonstrated that central bank independence can expand in harmful ways even as transparency increases and inflation targeting is adopted. It is time to discard two misleading claims: first, that increased transparency inhibits central bank independence; and second, that transparency provides sufficient accountability for central banks in democratic societies. Instead, we should remove the goal independence of all central banks that retain it, including the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank.