1. La cantidad de dinero es una variable económica clave y como
todas las economías modernas utilizan un sistema monetario
fiduciario, es necesario que exista un organismo encargado de
regular la cantidad de dinero que hay en la economía. Este organismo
es el banco central. El banco
central tiene como función principal controlar la oferta monetaria.
Las decisiones que el banco central toma sobre la oferta monetaria
es lo que se denomina la política monetaria.
2. Originalmente no era realizar la política
monetaria sino la tarea de los bancos centrales era financiar el
gasto del gobierno. Así el Banco Central más antiguo-el Banco de
Suecia (1668)-se estableció fundamentalmente con la finalidad de
financiar el gasto militar. El Banco de Inglaterra (1694) se creó
para financiar la guerra con Francia. Hoy, sin embargo, la mayoría
de los bancos centrales tiene prohibido financiar el galos déficit
del gobierno.
3. El concepto de banco central con su
significado actual no surge hasta el siglo XX.
A principios del siglo pasado existían únicamente 18 bancos
centrales en el mundo frente a 173 a finales del siglo.
Hoy la mayoría de los países tienen un
banco central que lleva a cabo algún tipo de política monetaria..
4.
Con el transcurso del tiempo la política monetaria y los bancos
centrales han ido ganando protagonismo al tiempo que la política
monetaria se ha ido centrando en el objetivo de controlar la
inflación. El abandono del patrón oro ha sido un elemento clave en¡
el inicio de esta dinámica. Con el patrón oro la política monetaria
tiene muy poca discrecionalidad y el oro es el
ancla nominal del sistema.
5. El papel actual de la banca central
La comprensión de cómo actúa
la política monetaria ha evolucionada a los largo de los últimos
treinta años, afectando profundamente a aspectos económicos e
institucionales e internacionales de la banca central.
Leer este artículo de Charles Wyplosz en donde analiza:
1. Evolución reciente de los principios de
los bancos centrales
2. Evolución reciente de las instituciones
de los bancos centrales
3. Implicaciones internacionales del nuevo
punto de vista
Charles Wyplosz
Graduate Institute of
International Studies, Geneva and CEPR Second Quarter 2004
THE ROLE OF CENTRAL BANKING
Executive Summary
Our understanding of how monetary policy
works and what it can achieve has significantly changed over
the last three decades. This evolution has profoundly affected
central banks all over the world. They now focus on the price
stability objective and they tend to consider other objectives
(growth, employment, the exchange rate) as secondary at best.
Monetary policy is understood to affect
inflation over an horizon of about two years, partly through
its impact on the level of activity, partly through its
ability to affect expectations, and partly through the effect
on the exchange rate. The level of activity is sensitive to
interest rate changes either directly or through the
availability of credit.
Current practice identifies:
- one objective: price stability, typically
defined as an inflation rate of around 2%
- one instrument: the short-term interest rate
- sometimes an intermediate target: expected inflation or,
in the case of the Eurosystem, monetary aggregates
Because governments have been found to
usually exhibit an inflation bias, it is generally considered
that the price stability objective requires that central banks
be independent. Independence, in turn, raises the question of
accountability. Instrument independent central banks are given
their objective by the government and are free to use the
interest rate as they see fit. Goal independent central banks
are free to both set their inflation objective and to use the
interest rate accordingly. Instrument independence allows for
a fair amount of accountability.
While the primacy of the inflation
objective is not really controversial, there remains the
question of whether central banks should also attempt to deal
with other objectives such as growth and employment or asset
prices, including the exchange rate. Most central banks assert
that they can only aim at one objective, price stability,
although in practice many of them are found to pay attention
to both output and employment. All central banks reject the
responsibility of dealing with asset prices. Those central
banks that operate a fixed exchange rate regime in effect
substitute this objective to that of price stability, the
latter being a byproduct of exchange rate stability.
The focus on domestic objectives implies
that central banks have little interest in international
policy coordination. The most important currencies are left to
fluctuate in response to market sentiment and their central
banks are eager not to make any exchange rate commitment,
including regarding coordinated interventions.
1. Recent evolution of
central banking principles
1.1. Money, inflation and
growth
The role of monetary policy
has been radically changed over the last few decades. Most of
the key intellectual advances date back to the 1970s and have
since then trickled down to almost every central bank in the
world and almost every university course on the subject. The
old wisdom – often called "Keynesian" and enshrined in the
famed IS-LM framework – held that, alongside fiscal policy,
monetary policy can be used affect growth and unemployment,
mainly by changing borrowing costs.
Inflation was seen as a
consequence of excessive growth (or very low unemployment).
The sharp change of view came through three key related
findings:
- in the long run,
inflation only depends of money growth
- the effects of monetary
policy on growth and unemployment are relatively short-
lived
- in order to affect output
and unemployment, monetary policy must be largely
unpredictable.
While the last view is not
generally held nowadays, the first two results remain
essentially unchallenged. Together, they carry stark
implications:
- central banks ought to
focus on their long run effect on inflation
- central banks ought to
treat growth and unemployment as a secondary objective.
Another implication of this
view is that central banks should not attempt to carry out or
encourage selective credit policies. This practice, very
widespread in Europe until well into the 1970s, has led to
excessive money growth and inflation, while introducing severe
distortions in banking and financial markets. In fact, the
practice required a heavy dose of financial repression,
keeping stock markets undersized, using banks as industrial
policy instruments and resorting to capital controls.
1.2. Exchange rate policy
Once capital controls are
eliminated, the ability to conduct separate monetary and
exchange rate policies vanishes. This leads to further stark
conclusions:
- Monetary policy must be
dedicated to controlling either the interest rate or the
exchange rate.
- "Soft pegs", fixed and
adjustable exchange rate regimes of the Bretton Woods and
EMS variety, are fundamentally unstable and likely to face
recurrent speculative attacks.
- The only robust exchange
rate regimes are the extreme ones: fully floating rates at
one end and, at the other end, "hard pegs" such as monetary
unions, dollarization/euroization, with doubts about the
chances of survival of currency boards.
This "two-corner solution"
view is often seen as mandating the adoption of the corner
regimes. In the free-floating corner, the central bank is free
to concentrate on controlling the interest rate, though it
must accepts that the exchange rate be variable, often quite
significantly so. Sitting in this corner are the major central
banks: the Fed, the Eurosystem, the Bank of England. Under the
hard peg solution, the central bank forfeits to control its
interest rate, which means that there is no independent
national monetary policy. This solution has been chosen by
countries with very poor (Argentina until 2002, Ecuador, El
Salvador) or absent monetary policy record (Panama, Estonia,
Lithuania), or special cases (the European monetary union,
Hong Kong).
Another interpretation of
the "two-corner solution" is that the popular "soft pegs" can
be used if capital mobility is restricted. Most developing
countries, partly out of a concern for exchange rate
volatility, partly for lack of adequate financial market, camp
in the middle.
1.3. Policy incentives
Short of providing the
authorities with fleeting revenues, high and lasting inflation
does not serve any useful purpose but it is the source of much
hardship. And yet since the early 1970s inflation has been
high around the world until the 1990s (Figure 1).
Why did many – in fact most
– central banks allow inflation to rise and remain so high?
One interpretation is that the understanding of inflation, and
of the crucial role of money growth, was poor. This
interpretation holds that "Keynesians" were wrong and slow to
recognize their mistakes. Another interpretation is that it is
easy to let inflation rise (to encourage the economy to grow
faster for a while and to collect the inflation tax), but hard
to reverse gear (significant increases in unemployment).
Having mistakenly let the
inflation genie out of the money bottle, central banks were
slow to correct their mistakes. Yet another interpretation is
that central banks, more precisely their governments, are
myopic and driven by short term considerations: they know that
excessively rapid money growth eventually results in ris ing
inflation, but they are motivated by rapid growth and low
unemployment in the nearer term.
Figure 1. Inflation rates
(1969-2003)
The two first
interpretations are now mainly of historical interest. The
last one is open to question but it carries an important
message: central banks should not be in a situation where they
are tempted to reap short term gains at the cost of long term
pain. This consideration lies behind the fact that an
increasing number of central banks have been made – formally
or informally – independent of political power and
simultaneously handed out a mandate to deliver price stability.
This issue is taken up in Section 2.
1.4. Channels of monetary
policy
How do central banks affect the
economy and inflation? Four channels seem to be active.
The interest rate channel
A high interest rate, for
instance, raises borrowing costs, which discourages spending
by households and firms. This tends to slow the economy down
and, as unemployment starts increasing, price and wage
moderation sets in.
The credit channel
In order to increase the
interest rate, the central bank reduces the economy’s
liquidity, which means among other things that bank credit is
less plentiful. Households and firms find themselves unable to
borrow as much as they would wish, which again limits spending
and growth, eventually keeping price and wage increases in
check.
The exchange rate channel
By raising the interest rate,
the central bank makes investment in domestic currency assets
more attractive. The resulting capital inflows lead to an
exchange rate appreciation, which in turns makes imported
goods cheaper, pushing down the price level. Eventually, the
associated loss of external competitiveness impacts on growth
and employment.
Expectations
Prices and wages are set
partly in anticipation of the evolution of the inflation rate.
This is one reason why central bank actions are closely
monitored by a wide range of economic actors, including
coroporations and trade unions. This is also central banks
increasingly invest in communication strategies. Central
bankcredibility, usually defined as a determination to deliver
price stability, thus becomes an important channel of monetary
policy.
Through the first two
channels, monetary policy affects inflation by affecting
output and employment. This occurs after a long lag from the
interest rate to output and employment (6 to 12 months) and
then inflation (12 to 18 months). The exchange rate channel
works faster on inflation (say, 6 months), with a longer lag
for the output effect (6 to 12 months). The expectations
channel is of a more general nature, expectations being very
long to respond to sound policy actions and prompt to react to
policy mistakes. Overall, the evidence is that the lags, and
indeed the size of the effects, are quite variable and
difficult to predict accurately. Much seems to depend on the
general economic context (including events abroad) and on how
credible is the central bank.
2. Recent evolution of central
banking institutions
2.1. Instruments, objectives
and targets
What do central banks do? A
classic way of thinking about that question is to frame it as
follows: a central bank uses available instruments to achieve
some objectives, possibly identifying intermediate targets.
The instrument is
usually the short-term interest rate, since this is one
economic variable that a central bank can fairly precisely set
and control.
1
Under a freely floating
exchange rate regime the objective is nearly always
inflation, usually under the label of price stability. In some
cases, other objectives are specified but they are usually
seen as secondary. This is the case of the Eurosystem,
required "to support the general economic policies in the
Community", or of the US Federal Reserve which is expected to
achieve "full employment".
When the exchange rate is
fixed, the central bank is committed to make this its primary
objective. To that effect, it must promptly adjust the
interest rate to maintain the exchange rate within a pre-announced
range. Foreign exchange market interventions are sometimes
used as an additional instrument, but their effectiveness is
limited in the absence of capital controls. Capital controls
themselves are used as an additional instrument, with limited
effectiveness too.
The road from the interest
rate to inflation is indirect, open to quite a large amount of
uncertainty. This leads some central banks to look for
indicators more directly related to inflation but less easily
controllable. These indicators are called intermediate
targets. The Eurosystem can be seen as having adopted the
money supply (M3) as an intermediate target; this is based on
the view that inflation is ultimately driven by the rate of
growth of money. The Bank of England explicitly uses expected
inflation – measured by its own forecasts – as an intermediate
target. In some small open economies, central banks focus on
the exchange rate as it exercises a powerful effecton the
domestic price level. The Fed does not use any intermediate
target.
2.2. Inflation
Three main issues are
involved in pursing an inflation objective. The first one is
how price stability is specified. Inflation targeting central
banks typically have an explicit objective and a tolerance
margin; the Bank of England, for example is committed to
achieve an inflation rate of 2% +/-0.5%, see Table 1 for other
countries which have adopted that
strategy. The Eurosystem has a deliberately vague objective ("less
but close to 2%") with no mid-point
and no tolerance margin. The Fed has no explicit objective at
all. Most central banks consider that price stability is
achieved when inflation is around 2 to 3%. Academic research
is not providing as precise an estimate of desirable price
stability. Negative effects from inflation seem to set in at
higherlevels (above 5%) and there are questions whether too
low an average inflation rate might be a source of
unemployment given that, in most countries, nominal wages
cannot be reduced, because of traditional or legal provisions.
Table 1. Inflation objective in inflation-targeting
countries in 2003
The second issue concerns
the definition of the price index. As Table 1 shows, most
central banks use the consumer price index, sometimes
excluding rental costs. It is sometimes argued that it is
better to focus on "core inflation", excluding volatile
components such as energy prices or other components directly
affected by monetary policy like housing. This is, in
principle, a good idea: central banks should not be held
responsible for the consequence of events that they do not
control and that are shortlived, while the impact of monetary
policy itself is long. The problem is that there is no obvious
best way of defining core inflation, which opens up the door
to perceived arbitrariness. The CPI itself is quite arbitrary,
of course, but in practice is seems to tract pretty well what
citizens perceive.
2
The last issue is the
horizon at which central banks aim. As noted above
(Section1.4), monetary policy affects inflation with a long
and variable lag. This implies that central banks should not
take responsibility for short-run and precisely defined
targets. Most central banks that announce an explicit horizon
focus on a period that ranges from 18 months up to three years.
Others, like the Federal Reserve and the Eurosystem, do not
specify any horizon but often refer to "medium run" effects.
2.3. Independence
One of the most striking
evolutions of the last decade is the increasing number of
central banks that have been granted formal or informal
independence from government. Part of the reason for this
evolution has been the success of three independent central
banks, the US Fed, the German Bundesbank and the Swiss
National Bank. Another part of the reason is that the
Maastricht Treaty has mandated that all EU countries should
grant formal independence to their central banks, a decision
itself motivated by the wish to "import the Bundesbank’s
reputation".
Finally, the evolution of our
understanding of monetary policy (Section 1.1) has conveyed the message that monetary policy has
short-lived effects on growth and
employment with long- lasting inflationary implications.
Governments are known to be strongly motivated by short-run
rewards and to tend to dismiss longer-run costs, a phenomenon labeled the "inflation bias" and
blamed for many of the inflationary
episodes that underpin the evidence reported in Figure 1.
Indeed, much of the recent
improvement in the inflation performance can be traced back to
the increased independence of central
banks.
Central bank independence
raises a number of new issues, however. First and foremost is the question of accountability.
Central banks are bureaucracies – i.e.
public institutions run by unelected officials – that affect
all citizens. Normally, bureaucrats operate under the direct
ex ante and ex post control of elected officials; severing this link creates the need for
accountability, i.e. the ex post control of central banks by elected officials.
Second, and somewhat related,
is the scope of central bank independence. Some central banks,
like the ECB, are fully independent: they can decide what
their task is and how to use their
instruments. Other central banks, like the Bank of England,
are instrument independent, but
not goal independent; they are given an inflation target by
the government and are free to use their instrument as they
wish, provided that they deliver the
mandated inflation rate.
Instrument independence has the
merit of going a long way toward solving the accountability problem. The main risk is that
ill-motivated governments might set
excessively high inflation targets, in effect forcing their
central banks into indiscipline. Goal independence, on the
other side, by giving central banks a totally free hand, calls
for a strong accountability process. The US Federal Reserve is accountable to the US Congress, which
can reduce the bank’s independence if it so wishes. The ECB’s accountability to the EU
Parliament is weak as the latter has no mean to influence the
former. This illustrates the difficulty of combining accountability and full goal independence.
2.4. Objectives
A popular principle – due to
the late Dutch economist Tinbergen – is that a policymaker with n instruments at his
disposal can achieve n objectives, certainly no more.
Applied to monetary policy, this means that a central bank
which has one instrument (the interest
rate) cannot and should not aim at more than one objective (price
stability).
This principle is a bit
disingenuous, though. First, it assumes that there is no uncertainty. Second, it overlooks the
time lag between action and effect. As noted above, changing the interest rate affects first
output, then inflation. In addition, in the very short run, it affects asset prices (stocks
and the exchange rate). This allows central banks to be more
sophisticated, in two main respects:
Output and inflation
The link from output to
inflation, part of the channel of monetary effects, can be
exploited to pay attention to both price stability and output
or employment. This is what the Fed is doing, constantly
trading off its inflation and employment objectives. In fact,
most central banks are concerned with this trade-off, which
has been formalized as the "Taylor rule" (named after John
Taylor, currently head of the US Council of Economic Advisers)
which describe the interest rate as responding to both the
expected inflation rate and the output gap. The Eurosystem
denies that it follows a Taylor rule, yet the mounting
evidence is that it does.
Asset prices: dealing with
bubbles
In the presence of serious
asset price disruptions (stock bubbles and severe exchange rate misalignment), central banks may
use the interest rate to quickly affect stock prices and the exchange rate and then to
gradually adjust the interest rate to avoid unwanted inflation effects. Most central banks
reject this suggestion for two main
reasons: 1) they fear that they could be drawn into unwanted
inflationary effects; 2) they claim that
they are not in a position to identify asset mispricing. This
controversy is unlikely to disappear.
2.5. Bank supervision
Many central banks are also
charged with banking supervision. The main reason is that they are expected to conduct lender of
last resort interventions in the presence of systemic banking crisis. To do so, they need to
be able to promptly decide which banks
to rescue, which requires up-to-date information about
individual bank financial health.
The tendency is to assign
bank supervision to other independent institutions. The main
reason is that, except for lender of last resort operations,
bank supervision is a distinct activity from central banking,
and that combining monetary policy with bank supervision may
lead to conflicts of interest in central banks. The
information issue is believed to be a weak argument since the
supervisor could always pass the information to the central
bank in case of systemic bank crisis. A number of European
national central banks are still in charge of bank supervision
and strongly defend this function. Truth is that this position
is a classic case of turf battle.
3. International implications
of the new view
The view that central banks
should focus on price stability (and in some cases on the
output- inflation trade-off) implies that they should
concentrate on purely domestic objectives. In comparison with
times when they were attempting to steer the exchange rate,
often taken to be the main policy objective, this view means
that central banks are much less inclined to cooperate
internationally.
The international financial
architecture question includes many issues, including the role
and governance of the international financial institutions
that goes beyond the role of central banks. The issue of
direct concern here is that of the collective management of
exchange rates.
Since the end of the Bretton
Woods system, there is no prescribed exchange rate regime. In
addition, all developed countries and an increasing number of
developing countries have freed their capital accounts. The "two-corner
solution" reasoning presented in Section 1.2 implies that
these countries must choose between full exchange rate
flexibility and hard pegs. The developed countries have chosen
full exchange rate flexibility, with the exception of those
European countries that joined the monetary union and have
adopted a very hard peg among themselves, leaving the euro to
float vis a vis the rest of the world. The emerging market
countries have also moved to full flexibility (e.g. Brazil,
Chile, Mexico, Russia) sometimes after experimenting with hard
pegs (Argentina), but some of them actively manage their
exchange rates, as is case in South East Asia. Most other
developing countries have retained capital controls and thus
can continue with normal pegs.
Fully flexible exchange
rates tend to be volatile, like any other asset price. The
shortrun (day-to-day or month-to-month) volatility is of
limited practical importance as it concerns mostly financial
intermediaries, who are well equipped to deal with this
phenomenon. More worrisome, because it affects trade
competitiveness, is the longer run
volatility shown in Figure 2, which displays the average
exchange rate corrected for price inflation, a measure of
external competitiveness. Changes of 50% over a couple of
years, frequently observed, seriously affect trade.
This pattern leads to frequent
calls to "do something about it", but what can be done?
One solution would be to re-create
another Bretton Woods. This would call for central banks to
abandon the price stability objective in favor of an exchange
rate objective. There is no indication
that this solution is garnering any support, and for good
reasons. Soft pegs would be extraordinarily fragile – in fact
doomed to failure – given the globalization of financial
markets. Hard pegs, in effect a worldwide monetary union, are
ruled out; it is enough to look at the complexity of the
European experiment to see why.
Another solution is joint
management of exchange rates, to try and avoid the wide
fluctuations seen in Figure 2. To do so, central banks would
have to relax somewhat their commitment to the price stability
objective. Section 2.4 explains why this option is not under
consideration. Success with achieving low inflation over the
recent years suggests that the strategy currently adopted is
successful. To abandon this strategy, a strong case ought to
be made. True, wide exchange rate fluctuations are
inconvenient, but they are hardly threatening. The large
currency areas (the US, the euro area, Japan) are quite closed
to international trade and therefore suffer little from
exchange rate misalignments. Smaller, more open areas do
suffer from misalignments and wish more exchange rate
stability; they face a real policy dilemma: the UK, for
instance, has chosen to retain the price stability objective,
while Denmark or Korea are committed – explicitly or
implicitly – to the exchange rate objective. Given the
distribution of powers on the international scene, an
international agreement to stabilize exchange rates is not on
the horizon, leaving the smaller countries with uncomfortable
unilateral choices.
Figure 2. Real Effective
Exchange Rates (Index 1995:100)
A last possibility is to
occasionally conduct foreign exchange market interventions, in
order to avoid either excessive short run volatility and or
most flagrant cases of misalignments. The evidence is not very
encouraging, yet in some cases interventions, especially when
coordinated, may achieve some results. At this stage,
interventions are decided on a case by case basis, with rare
instances of coordination. This is an area where some progress
could be made, but here again the large countries have few
incentives and prefer to display a strong degree of skepticism.
1 As previously mentioned, many
central banks used to operate several instruments (credit,
controls of capital flows).
2 The recent controversy in
several euro area countries on the perception that inflation
has been higher than measured by the CPI is unusual. It seems
that the once-off rounding-up effect (denied by the ECB),
which has not been corrected afterwards, has left a lasting
impression on consumers.
1. La existencia de una unión
monetaria con una única moneda hace necesario que exista una única
política monetaria.
Con la introducción del euro ha sido
por tanto necesario crear en la Unión Europea una nueva institución
comunitaria encargada de ejecutar la política monetaria, ya que la
política monetaria única no puede realizarse por distintos bancos
centrales independientes. No obstante, considerando la estructura
política de la Comunidad, se ha previsto que la nueva institución
esté organizada siguiendo un planteamiento federal. A continuación
se analizan cuatro puntos importantes del BCE:
2 .
Organización: La estructura de las nuevas instituciones monetarias
de la Unión Europea se basa en un Banco Central Europeo (BCE) que
junto con los bancos centrales nacionales de los 15 países miembros
de la Unión Europa constituyen el Sistema Europeo de Bancos
Centrales (SEBC). El BCE y el SEBC fueron creados el 1 de junio de
1988. El SEBC está dirigido por el Consejo de Gobierno, el Comité
Ejecutivo del BCE, y el Consejo General.
La tarea principal del Comité
Ejecutivo, que está formado por el presidente del BCE, el
vicepresidente y cuatro miembros más, es llevar a cabo la política
monetaria de acuerdo con las líneas generales marcadas por el
Consejo de Gobierno, para lo cual da instrucciones a los bancos
centrales nacionales.
El Consejo de Gobierno es el
responsable de formular y establecer las líneas generales de la
política monetaria y está formado por el Comité ejecutivo y los
gobernadores de los bancos centrales nacionales de los 12 países del
área del euro. No forman parte del mismo, por tanto, Dinamarca,
Suecia y Reino Unido.
El Consejo General es el tercer
órgano de decisión y está formado por el presidente, el
vicepresidente del BCE y los gobernadores de los 15 miembros de la
Unión Europea. Dado que los bancos centrales de Dinamarca, Suecia y
Reino Unido no han aceptado el euro todavía, estos países no
participan en las decisiones relacionadas con la política monetaria
en la zona del euro. No obstante, sí pueden discutir temas
relacionados con la política monetaria y el tipo de cambio de sus
monedas con respecto al euro.
El Eurosistema es un
término adoptado por el Consejo de Gobierno del BCE, para referirse
a un concepto que engloba la estructura a través del cual es SEBC
realiza sus principales tareas. El Eurosistema está formado por el
BCE y los bancos centrales nacionales de Estados Miembros que han
adoptado el euro. Por tanto, en la actualidad, hay doce bancos
centrales nacionales en el Eurosistema. Naturalmente, cuando los
quince Estados Miembros de la Unión Europea participen en el área
del euro, el término "Eurosistema" será un sinónimo de SEBC.
La política monetaria
día a día se lleva a cabo por el Consejo de Gobierno. Cada miembro
del Consejo tiene un voto. El presidente del Consejo de la Unión
Europea y un miembro de la Comisión Europea pueden también
participar en las reuniones, aunque no tienen derecho a voto. La
mayoría de las decisiones, entre las que se incluyen las
relacionadas con la política monetaria, se toman por mayoría simple.
No obstante, algunas decisiones que afectan a la posición de los
bancos nacionales como accionistas del SEBC se toman ponderando el
voto en función de la participación de cada banco central en el
capital de BCE.
1. El objetivo principal del SEBC será
mantener la estabilidad de precios. Sin perjuicio de este
objetivo, el SEBC apoyar` las políticas económicas generales
de la Comunidad con el fin de contribuir a la realización de
los objetivos comunitarios establecidos en el artículo 2. El
SEBC actuar con arreglo al principio de una economía de
mercado abierta y de libre competencia, fomentando una
eficiente asignación de recursos de conformidad con los
principios expuestos en el articulo 4.
El Tratado de
Maastricht incorpora el principio de estabilidad de precios para
la política monetaria en el artículo 105, en donde se establece
que, "el objetivo principal del SEBC será el mantener estabilidad
de precios". No obstante, se admite que "sin perjuicio para el
objetivo de la estabilidad de precios, el SEBC apoyará las
políticas económicas generales de la Comunidad".
Se observa que el
Tratado define con vaguedad el objetivo de estabilidad de precios.
La vaguedad ha sido posteriormente disipada de forma que hoy el el
objetivo del BCE se define como:
La estabilidad de precios se
define el mantenimiento a medio plazo de un incremento anual
en el Índice Armonizado de Precios al Consumo para el área del
euro entre el 0 y el 2%.
La propuesta de la
estabilidad de precios como objetivo prioritario del SEBC tiene su
base teórica en la impotencia de la política monetaria para
afectar, sobre todo a largo plazo, al nivel de renta real y
empleo. Esta ineficacia de la política monetaria se deriva de su
incapacidad para afectar al tipo de interés real en un mundo en el
que los agentes económicos anticipan los aumentos de precios.
2. La asimetría del objetivo de
la estabilidad de precios en el BCE. El BCE no tiene un objetivo
simétrico de inflación definido de forma explícita. Esto tiene
algunas implicaciones importantes: Leer la cita del Banco de
Inglaterra:
Target symmetry
5.20 The
UK inflation target is explicitly symmetric; deviations
below the target are treated as seriously as deviations
above. The symmetric target means that monetary policy is
neither unnecessarily loose nor unnecessarily tight and, in
effect, allows policymakers to aim for the highest level of
growth and employment consistent with keeping inflation at
the Government's target. By contrast, the ECB does not have
an explicitly symmetric inflation target. The objective is
to keep HICP inflation below 2 per cent but does not define
a lower bound; though the May 2003 review states that: "...the
Governing Council agreed that in the pursuit of price
stability it will aim to maintain inflation rates close to
2% over the medium term".
5.21
Asymmetry in the price stability objective has a number of
implications. Although the ECB's price stability objective
relates to positive inflation, it carries a risk of
deflation, especially in individual countries, although the
fact that, to date, euro area inflation has averaged 2 per
cent indicates that in practice this risk has not
materialised. More generally, the lack of an explicit target
rate increases the uncertainties for other economic agents.
The euro area's fiscal authorities might be overly
expansionary because they fear that the ECB would not react
vigorously enough to a shortfall in demand and inflation.
Private sector firms and individuals lack an explicit anchor
for their inflation expectations, meaning that their
planning could be more affected by the short-term inflation
volatility that is an integral feature of the adjustment
process in EMU.
Independent central banks are more likely to achieve low
inflation than finance ministers because they have a longer
time horizon. But independence is no panacea: central banks
can still make mistakes. Note that Germany’s Reichsbank was
statutorily independent when the country suffered
hyperinflation in 1923.
The Economist. Survey World Economy
At first, governments in most
countries kept a tight grip on the monetary reins, telling central
banks when to change interest rates. But when inflation soared,
governments saw the advantage of granting central banks independence
in matters of monetary policy. Short-sighted politicians might try
to engineer a boom before an election, hoping that inflation would
not rise until after the votes had been counted, but an independent
central bank insulated from political pressures would give higher
priority to price stability. If, as a result of independence, policy
is more credible, workers and firms are likely to adjust their wages
and prices more quickly in response to a tightening of policy, and
so, the argument runs, inflation can be reduced with a smaller loss
of output and jobs. Thus, like Ulysses, who asked to be roped to the
mast so he would not succumb to the sirens’ song, politicians have
removed themselves from monetary temptation. The Economist
1. El artículo 107
del Tratado de Maastricht y el Artículo 7 del SEBC garantizan la
independencia del BCE, de los bancos nacionales, y de los miembros
de sus órganos de decisión a la hora de ejercer sus funciones. Estos
no pueden
"solicitar o
recibir instrucciones de las instituciones comunitarias, de los
gobiernos de los estados miembros o de cualquier otro organismo".
Asimismo, los
gobiernos e instituciones comunitarias están obligados a abstenerse
de influir al BCE o los bancos centrales. Además, el artículo 10.4
del Estatuto del SEBC establece que
"las deliberaciones
de las reuniones del Consejo de Gobierno del BCE son
confidenciales",
aunque se permite la
publicación del resultado de sus deliberaciones.
2. Esta exigencia del
máximo grado de independencia política para el BCE, tanto con
respecto a los gobiernos nacionales como frente a las autoridades
comunitarias, refleja una línea de pensamiento, cada día con mayor
número de adeptos, que considera que si un banco central ha de tener
éxito para preservar la estabilidad monetaria, debe tener
credibilidad. Esta credibilidad se logra manteniendo una estricta
separación entre la tarea de poner dinero en circulación, que debe
estar a cargo del banco central, y la tarea de financiar el gasto
del gobierno. Raras veces se puede confiar en que los gobiernos no
impriman dinero, si pueden hacerlo, con el único fin de financiar el
gasto público. Un banco central verdaderamente independiente puede
evitarlo.
3.
La independencia del BCE no impide que esté previsto que deba dar
cuenta al público de sus acciones. El Tratado de Maastricht y el
artículo 15 del Estatuto del SEBC contienen varias propuestas para
asegurar que el BCE informe de sus acciones. Así, el BCE debe
publicar el estado financiero consolidado del Eurosistema cada
semana; publicar trimestralmente un informe de la posición
financiera del Eurosistema; y, presentar en el Parlamento un informe
anual sobre la política monetaria.
4. La anterior
afirmación parece estar avalada por los hechos. Varios estudios en
los 1990s confirmaban en términos generales que a mayor independencia del banco central
menor tasa de inflación del país en cuestión. Incluso una menor
inflación no parecía estar asociada con un menor crecimiento
económico. Correlación no implica causalidad. Algunos
economistas (Adam Poser) señalan que la baja inflación de Alemania y
la independencia de su banco central fueron determinadas por un
tercer elemento: el rechazo social a la inflación debido a la
hiperinflación precedente.
FRBSF Economic Letter
97-36; November 28, 1997
British Central Bank Independence and Inflation Expectations
On May 6, 1997, the new Chancellor of the
Exchequer of Great Britain, Gordon Brown, announced a policy
change that he described as "... the most radical internal
reform to the Bank of England since it was established in
1694." The reform granted the Bank of England independence
from the government in the conduct of its interest rate policy.
In this Economic Letter, I examine how the
announcement of the regime change affected expectations about
future inflation rates in Britain. In particular, I examine
how estimates of inflation expectations, as measured bythe spreads on conventional and index-linked British
gilts, responded to the May 6 announcement.
A substantial body of economic literature
predicts that the more independent a country's central bank is,
the lower the inflation rate is in that economy--in other
words, it predicts a negative correlation between central bank
independence and inflation.
I use three pairs of gilts in the study.
They mature in 2001, 2006, and 2016. The estimates of average
levels of inflation expected to prevail over the duration of
each gilt pair are plotted in Figure 1, with the May 6 event
date and the traditional two-week event window highlighted. It
can be seen that expected inflation decreased on the event
date and indeed over the entire two-week event window.
Moreover, these decreases were seen for all three maturities
in the study. In contrast, estimates of changes in expected
future real interest rate levels (not shown here) were
extremely minor.
These results indicate that the market
perceived that enhanced central bank independence would lead
to lower average rates of future inflation. For the longest-maturity
bond pair (2016), average future expected inflation rates
decreased by 34 basis points on the day of the announcement
and decreased by 60 basis points over the longer two-week
event window.
Moverover, these results are not subject to
the criticisms that a spurious negative relationship exists
between central bank independence and inflation because
countries that desire lower inflation rates are also likely to
adopt more independent central bank regimes. In this case, it
is unlikely that the attitude of the British public towards
inflation changed markedly on May 6. The announcement
therefore qualifies as a "natural experiment" of an
institutional change in central bank regimes. These results,
therefore, provide evidence that announcements of
institutional changes alone do matter, in the sense that the
market priced this institutional change as having a
significant impact on future expected inflation rates.
Mark M. Spiegel Research Officer
Central
banks are now more powerful than ever before. They should
enjoy their moment of glory: it will not last, says Pam
Woodall, our economics editor
AS THE world’s
top economic policymakers gather this weekend in
Washington for the annual get-together of the
IMF and the World
Bank, they should raise a glass to the central bankers who
20 years ago started their real fight against inflation.
The 1979 annual meeting, which took place in Belgrade at a
time of double-digit inflation and a sliding dollar, was
memorable not for any policy decisions it took, but
because Paul Volcker, then newly installed as chairman of
America’s Federal Reserve, suddenly decided to return home
before the formal business had even begun. On October 6th
1979, following a secret meeting of the Federal Open
Market Committee, the Fed’s policymaking body, Mr Volcker
announced his “Saturday Night Special”: a package of
measures designed to squeeze out inflation by radically
changing the way the Fed controlled the money supply. This
was a defining moment in the battle against inflation, and
signalled the start of a new assertiveness among central
banks.
Mr Volcker succeeded in
crushing inflation, but at the cost of America’s worst
recession since the second world war. Nevertheless, the
Fed’s boldness encouraged other central banks to take up
the fight. Today, central banks not only agree more or
less unanimously that price stability should be the main
goal of monetary policy, but most of them have in fact
achieved it. The average inflation rate in the rich
economies is currently just above 1%, its lowest for
almost half a century.
The power of central
banks has steadily increased over the past couple of
decades. Until the late 1980s, only the Fed, the German
Bundesbank and the Swiss National Bank enjoyed legal
independence. Most central banks remained firmly under the
thumb of finance ministries. But the surge in global
inflation in the 1970s and 1980s convinced many people
that politicians were not always to be trusted with the
monetary levers, so central bankers were allowed to take
control. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 1989 became
the first to be given independence and a clear mandate to
fight inflation. Over the past decade more and more
central banks, from the Bank of England to the Bank of
Mexico, have been set free.
Fifteen years ago the
idea that European governments would hand over a large
part of economic policy to unelected officials would have
been laughed at; yet today the new European Central Bank (ECB)
is the most independent central bank in the world, even
more insulated from political pressures than the
Bundesbank. Even the Bank of Japan, blamed by many for the
Japanese economy’s painful progress from boom to bust, has
been made independent. Never before in history have
central banks wielded so much power.
And not only that: many
of them also enjoy increased respect. This reflects their
general success in defeating inflation, but more
particularly, in America it also reflects the success of
Alan Greenspan, who succeeded Mr Volcker as the Fed’s
chairman, in safely steering the economy through more than
eight years of uninterrupted, low-inflation growth—the
longest peacetime expansion in America’s history. Low
unemployment and a soaring stockmarket have made Mr
Greenspan a popular hero. Indeed, he is probably the most
revered central banker of all time. Contrast that with the
early 1980s, when many small businesses saw Mr Volcker as
public enemy number one and construction workers formed
picket lines outside the Fed. The chairman of the Fed has
often been described as the second most powerful man in
the world. Mr Greenspan may have gone one better than that.
Without such a strong economy, surely President Clinton
would never have survived the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
All at
sea
Over the
years, central bankers have popularly been referred to as
captains, admirals, pilots and lifeboatmen. Implicit in
all these nautical titles is the assumption that central
bankers know exactly where they are heading, how their
craft (ie, the economy) works, and how their actions will
affect its course. Yet in reality central bankers have
more in common with the early navigators. They operate in
a world of huge uncertainty, with no reliable maps or
compasses. Because of lags in the publication of
statistics, they do not know precisely where the economy
has got to even today, let alone where it is going. And
some of the policy dilemmas they face are the equivalent
of not knowing whether the earth is round or flat. So for
all their increased power and independence, central banks
still find that their ability to steer economies with
precision is limited.
In some respects things have been
getting more difficult for them. They have always had to
live with uncertainty, but over the past couple of decades
that uncertainty has been hugely compounded by financial
deregulation and innovation. The role of central banks has
traditionally been defined in terms of banks, money and
inflation. Thus, at the very pinnacle of their power, it
is disconcerting that they still have to ask three
questions. What is a bank? What is money? And what is
inflation?
As the boundaries between different
sorts of financial institutions have become blurred,
central banks have found banks increasingly hard to
define, let alone police. The financial revolution has
also distorted the traditional measures of the money
supply, as people shift their savings from standard bank
deposits to new financial instruments. But perhaps most
worrying of all, a lively debate has recently got under
way about how to measure inflation, and which prices
central banks need to concern themselves with.
Specifically, should they try to stabilise the prices of
assets, such as property and shares, as well as the prices
of goods and services?
In this increasingly foggy world, the chances of
navigational errors are high. The immediate danger is not
that inflation will return to the double-digit levels of
the 1970s. Central bankers will be sure to raise interest
rates quickly if consumer prices turn up. Instead, new
hazards are looming which the navigators, still euphoric
about their defeat of inflation, have been slow to spot.
The most obvious of these are an asset-price bubble in
America and deflation in Japan. Awkwardly, central banks
are ill-equipped to deal with either.
Today, it has become conventional wisdom that the sole
objective of central banks should be the pursuit of price
stability. That could be dangerous, because central banks
have become obsessed with price stability as measured by
the consumer-price index (CPI).
By that gauge, most of them score high marks; for example,
over the past three years America’s inflation rate has
averaged 2.3% and Japan’s 0.8%. But the focus on
CPI inflation is too
narrow. Achieving low inflation does not guarantee
economic and financial stability.
Look closer,
and America’s economy reveals alarming signs of excess.
The Fed has allowed a stockmarket bubble to develop that
has been fuelled by rapid credit growth. Ironically, the
very success of the Fed in reducing inflation may have
inadvertently encouraged the bubble. American investors
and consumers seem to have exaggerated expectations of Mr
Greenspan’s ability to protect the economy and so support
the stockmarket. This faith in a “new era”, combined with
low nominal interest rates thanks to low inflation, has
sent share prices soaring. The Fed has made a big mistake
in ignoring this, for history shows that inflation in the
price of assets, such as shares and property, can
sometimes be even more dangerous than the more common
consumer-price sort: when bubbles burst, they can cause
serious economic harm.
At
the other extreme, the Bank of Japan has failed to learn
from the lessons of the 1930s. In Japan, many prices and
wages are now declining, and output has slumped far below
the economy’s productive potential, yet the Bank of Japan
has been slow to ease monetary policy, misguidedly
concerned that it might set off inflation again. The
ECB is only
in its infancy, but it, too, has already shown signs of
the same tunnel vision: seeing price stability as an end
in itself, and underestimating its ability to use monetary
policy to encourage growth when there is ample spare
capacity.
Some
central bankers brought up on the idea that their sole job
was to kill inflation have not yet woken up to the fact
that their new enemies are asset-price inflation and
deflation. This does not mean that central banks should
abandon the pursuit of price stability, which remains a
proper long-term objective. However, they should remember
that price stability is not an end in itself, but only a
means to the real aim of sustaining economic growth. Price
stability by itself will not prevent booms and busts, so
central banks need to widen their vision to include other
signs of economic imbalance. They must try to prevent both
severe asset-price bubbles that can burst painfully, and
deflationary conditions that depress growth.
Central
banks have a range of responsibilities, including monetary
policy, acting as lender of last resort, exchange-rate
policy and sometimes bank supervision. This survey will
concentrate mainly on monetary policy, because that is the
most important, and often the most troublesome, part of a
central banker’s job. Larry Summers, now America’s
treasury secretary, once said: “Monetary policy is destiny.
The prospect for peace and prosperity for the rest of this
century and beyond depends as much on monetary policies as
on any other factor.” Are central banks up to this awesome
task?
In many people’s minds, the term
“central banking” conjures up visions of prudence and
discipline. But, argues Mr Volcker: “Central banks [need
to be reminded of] what they are wont to warn others about:
excesses of zeal and confidence.” It is a sobering fact
that the increased prominence of central banks during this
century has coincided with more inflation, not less (see
chart 3). The gold standard did a much better job at
achieving price stability than discretionary monetary
policy. “The truly unique power of a central bank”, says
Mr Volcker, “is the power to create money, and ultimately
the power to create is the power to destroy.”
