Arnone and Presbitero analyze the design and the implementation of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, by pointing out its main drawbacks and suggesting a different approach to debt sustainability and debt relief programs

This book explores three key areas of central banking and governance - autonomy, accountability and transparency. It looks at links between the areas, as well as assessing the impact of central bank autonomy on macroeconomic performance. The issues are approached from theoretical and empirical...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION TO INDICATORS OF CENTRAL BANK AUTONOMY -- II. BASE INDICATORS OF DE JURE AUTONOMY -- III. SUBSEQUENT LITERATURE AND EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON BASE INDICATORS -- IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS -- Appendix I. Statistical Tables -- Appendix II. Summary of Base Indicators of...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION AND DATA -- II. UPDATED INDICATORS OF CENTRAL BANK AUTONOMY IN SELECTED OECD COUNTRIES -- III. AUTONOMY INDICATORS FOR EMERGING MARKETS AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES -- IV. PROGRESS TOWARDS AUTONOMY IN EMERGING MARKETS AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES -- V. OVERVIEW OF...

We calculate indexes of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indexes for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although...

This paper examines the relationship between the quality of banking supervision and governance of the supervisory agency, based on assessments of the Basel Core Principles and the IMF Code on Transparency in Financial Policies, covering 116 and 53 countries, respectively, with 51 common to both....

This paper presents an update of the Grilli-Masciandaro-Tabellini (GMT) index of central bank (CB) autonomy, based on CB legislation as of end-2003. The index is applied to a set of OECD and developing countries, and emerging market economies. For a smaller set of countries, the paper presents a...

This paper presents a survey of the literature on the measurement of central bank autonomy. We distinguish inputs that constitute the building blocks in the literature, and the literature that builds on them. Issues including sensitivity analysis, robustness, and endogeneity are discussed. The...

In many countries, authorities have designated a group of financial firms as the principal intermediaries in the government securities market-referred to as ""primary dealers"" or a ""primary dealer system."" This paper discusses policy issues related to the establishment of a primary dealer...