Central Bank Independence Revisited

Ed Balls, research fellow at Harvard’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government (M-RCBG), and his coauthor, Anna Stansbury, present the M-RCBG working paper, “Central Bank Independence Revisited: After the financial crisis, what should a model central bank look like?” on April 23, 2018, at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The paper examines whether the empirical case for central bank independence has collapsed, whether the new powers central banks have accumulated put independence at risk, and what further reforms are needed at the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. The Honorable Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard’s Charles W. Eliot University Professor, and Adam S. Posen, PIIE president, will discuss policy issues.