Davide Romelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, a Research affiliate of IM-TCD (International Macro-TCD) and SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum and a Research fellow of the BAFFI-CAREFIN centre, Bocconi University. Prof. Romelli is also Associate Editor of the International Journal of Finance & Economics.
Go to Davide Romelli webpageThis dataset provides information on a comprehensive index of CBI covering a wide range of central bank characteristics based on the charters of 154 central banks, over the period from 1972 to 2017. The construction of the index uses, as a starting point, the two most commonly employed CBI indices, namely the Grilli et al. (1991) [GMT] and the Cukierman et al. (1992) [CWN]. This new index, called CBI – extended (CBIE) index, provides information on 42 criteria of central bank institutional design across six dimensions: (1) governor and central bank board, (2) monetary policy and conflict resolution, (3) objectives, (4) limitations on lending to the government, (5) financial independence and (6) reporting and disclosure.
This extended index incorporates the characteristics of both the GMT and CWN indices. Moreover, it expands the GMT political independence index by collecting additional information on the dismissal of the governor and other board members, in addition to identifying if the governor is legally allowed to hold other offices in the government. It also augments the GMT economic independence index by including information on the authority responsible for setting the financial conditions on lending to the government. Apart from integrating these two indices, one important innovation of the CBIE index is the inclusion of new criteria that capture good practices in central bank financial independence and reporting and disclosure.
In addition to the data on the CBIE index, this dataset also provides information on the various subcomponents of the index, updated data on the Grilli et al. (1991), the Cukerman et al. (1992) and the Jacome and Vazquez indices of CBI, as well as a dummy indicating whether the independence of the central bank is entrenched in the constitution.