The Changing Nature of Central Banks Independence: A Critic Perspective

Abstract

Central banks independence and, on the other side, their accountability, represented and still represent a topical issue in the debate among central banking Scholars. The recent twin financial crisis (started in the U.S. and, following, spreading to Europe sovereign debt market) offered a concrete testing ground for evaluating the contemporary role of central banks in facing micro and macroeconomic issues. In this sense, it seems interesting to analyse if and how the traditional features of central banks and their current institutional design, based, especially in the EU upon the so called Bundesbank model, should be revised.