The paper discusses key elements of optimal central bank design and applies its findings to the Eurosystem. A …

The empirical literature on central banking has found measures of central bank independence/conservatism to be …. We find that an increase in central bank conservatism leads to higher short-term interest rates and a more activist … economy, higher output and somewhat lower inflation. We also investigate the interaction between the central bank and the …

welfare gain associated with making the central bank less conservative than society, however if the outside option is in real … of central bank conservatism. …

distribution in the European Central Bank (ECB) council. We show that, in a model where labor unions internalize the inflationary …

representation in a federal central bank addressing this question. Optimal voting weights reflect two opposing forces: the wish to …

size and voting power. One way to implement this principle is a rotation scheme for national central bank governors that …

This paper analyzes empirically differences in the size of central bank boards across countries. Defining a board as … 84 central bank boards at the end of 2003. We find that larger and more heterogeneous countries, countries with stronger …