The Central Bank Independence Dataset is the most comprehensive data set on de jure central bank independence (CBI) available to date. The 2025 version of this dataset updates Garriga 2016 for statutory central bank independence. It includes country-year observations covering 192 countries between 1970 and 2023. This represents a 46% extension in the coverage of the original data release.
The dataset identifies the creation of central banks (9,123 observations) and statutory reforms affecting CBI and their direction (9,109 observations). It codes four dimensions of CBI: personnel independence, central bank’s objectives, policy formulation, and limits on lending. These variables are scored from 0 (no independence) to 1 (maximum independence) and aggregated into two overall CBI indices following Cukierman, Webb, and Neyapti (1992) coding criteria. This version of the dataset introduces a regional diffusion variable, constructed as the yearly average of CBI weighted index (lvaw_garriga) in the following regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Middle East, Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries, and Western Europe and North America.