The European Central Bank: Reshaping Monetary Politics in Europe

This paper studies how the creation of a European Central Bank (ECB) will change the political economy of monetary policy in Europe. The twelve governors of the national Central Banks of the EEC have recently proposed a statute for the ECB which delineates its institutional structure. In this paper, we discuss the likely consequences of this statute on the conduct of monetary policy at the European level, particularly from the point of view of the trade-off between inflation and stabilization. We analyze the role of political independence of the ECB and the effect of voting rules for the appointments of the ECB board members on policy choices.