TY - BOOK ID - 84540324 TI - Legal Central Bank Independence and Inflation in Latin America During the 1990s PY - 2001 SN - 146235369X 1452780307 1282448064 9786613821256 1451919484 PB - Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, DB - UniCat KW - Banks and Banking KW - Inflation KW - Public Finance KW - Central Banks and Their Policies KW - Banks KW - Depository Institutions KW - Micro Finance Institutions KW - Mortgages KW - Price Level KW - Deflation KW - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue: General KW - Banking KW - Macroeconomics KW - Public finance & taxation KW - Central bank autonomy KW - Central bank accountability KW - Legal support in revenue administration KW - Central banks KW - Prices KW - Central bank legislation KW - Revenue administration KW - Banks and banking KW - Revenue KW - Venezuela, República Bolivariana de UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:84540324 AB - This paper reviews central banks’ legal reform in Latin America during the 1990s and discusses the status of central bank independence in the region. Based on this information, it builds a simplified index of central bank independence which, in addition to the commonly used criteria of political and economic independence, incorporates provisions of central banks’ financial autonomy, accountability, and lender-of-last-resort. The paper finds a moderate negative correlation between increased central bank independence and inflation during 1999–2001 in 14 Latin American countries. Dissagregating the index, the same analysis suggests that economic independence is the key component driving the observed negative correlation between legal central bank independence and inflation. ER -