Central bank independence is a multifaceted institutional design. The financial component has been seldom analysed. This paper intends to set a comprehensive conceptual background for central bank financial independence. Quite often central banks are modelled as robot-like maximizers of some...

There is a growing body of evidence that interest rate spreads in Africa are higher for big ba nks compared to small banks. One concern is that big banks might be using their market power to charge higher lending rates as they become larger, more efficient, and unchallenged. In contra st,...

The case for central bank independence is built on an intellectual two-step. Step one argues there is a problem of inflation prone government. Step two argues independence is the solution to that problem. This paper challenges that case and shows it is based on false politics and economics. The...

There is a growing body of evidence that interest rate spreads in Africa are higher for big banks compared to small banks. One concern is that big banks might be using their market power to charge higher lending rates as they become larger, more efficient, and unchallenged. In contrast, several...

This paper updates the standard workhorse model of banks' reserve management to include frictions inherent to money markets. We apply the model to study monetary policy implementation through an operating regime involving voluntary reserve targets (VRT). When reserves are abundant, as is the...

Purpose- In this study, we test the so-called 'Quiet Life Hypothesis' (QLH) which postulates that banks with market power are less efficient. Design/methodology/approach- We employ instrumental variable Ordinary Least Squares, Fixed Effects, Tobit and Logistic regressions. The empirical evidence...

China is well-placed to avoid the so-called “middle-income trap” and to continue to converge towards the more advanced economies, even though growth is likely to slow from near double-digit rates in the first decade of this millennium to around 7% at the 2020 horizon. However, in order to...

Iran’s agriculture part is one of the areas that can have an important effect on the growth of country’s economy. Concerning this, variables that can increase value added agriculture have been concentrated on and the government is supporting them. One of these policies is granting loanable...

Evidence on the interdependency between monetary policy and the state of the banking system is scarce. We suggest an integrated micro-macro approach with two core virtues. First, we measure the probability of bank distress directly at the bank level. Second, we integrate a microeconomic hazard...