Credit rating agencies have been an important determinant of countries' cost of capital in the last couple of decades. This paper studies the effect of the governance of modern central banks on the ratings assigned by the credit rating agencies Standard and Poor's and Moody's. Until recently,...

Theory and empirical evidence show that low inflation is a precondition for economic growth. Independent central banks and fixed exchange rates are institutional mechanisms that help keep in ation low by lending monetary policy credibility to governments. However, the two institutions are...

This paper studies the political economy of realignments to fixed exchange rates and suggests that the use of realignments is less likely when there are political benefits from stable exchange rates and when linkages across other issue areas increase the costs of realignment. More specifically...

Independent central banks prefer balanced budgets due to the long-run connection between deficits and inflation and can enforce their preference through interest rate increases and denial of credit to the government. We argue that legal central bank independence (CBI) deters fiscal deficits...

Though central banks make consequential macroeconomic decisions, little is known about diversity at the helm of these institutions. This article investigates what factors drive the gender balance in central bank boards. I document the lack diversity of central bank leadership and argue that it...

In dominant party regimes, party cadres' participation in decision-making constrains dictators from arbitrarily changing policy. Party based regimes are also better at mobilizing supporters in exchange for extensive patronage. The conventional wisdom is that these two mechanisms work together to...

In the last three decades, legal delegation of monetary policy to independent central banks (CBI) has achieved the status of a global norm of good governance. The recent backlash against this independence is an important but understudied trend. Our paper analyzes the potential for delegation...