Based on its outward-oriented development strategy, respectable growth, increased integration into world trade and financial markets, and imperfect though vibrant and wide-based democracy, Turkey is often cited as a development model for other countries in the region and elsewhere. Countering...

Excessive inflation is usually attributed to the lack of central bank's credibility. In this context, most of the literature considers transparency a means to establish central bank's credibility. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it shows that, even in the absence of...

OPTIMThe conservative central banker has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an...

This paper reports the results of a survey among private sector economists about credibility and transparency of central banks. In line with the survey of Alan Blinder among central bankers, we asked participants in Ifo s World Economic Survey to answer questions on the importance and...

The first part of this paper outlines the concept of democratic accountability of central banks, and compares the legal accountability of the ECB with some other central banks (Bank of Canada, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System). In the second part, we present a theory...