How do different institutional arrangements for the central bank perform when central bankers have private objectives and society's objectives vary with time? This paper evaluates three benchmark monetary institutions from a constitutional perspective: (i) a contract with an inflation- or monetary target announcement; (ii) an inflation rule, and (iii) the laissez faire policy, i.e. the absence of any contractual arrangement. At the stage of institutional choice there is uncertainty about both society's mean inflation target and the central banker's future inflation target. A target announcement reveals the type of the central banker and solves the credibility vs. flexibility trade-off but it can not prevent that the central banker follows private objectives. The announcement-based contract is the optimal institution if (i) the initial uncertainty about the central banker's objectives is small and (ii) if unemployment is sufficiently high.
Public Choice deals with the intersection between economics and political science. The journal was founded at a time when economists and political scientists became interested in the application of essentially economic methods to problems normally dealt with by political scientists. It has always retained strong traces of economic methodology, but new and fruitful techniques have been developed which are not recognizable by economists. Public Choice therefore remains central in its chosen role of introducing the two groups to each other, and allowing them to explain themselves through the medium of its pages.
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Public Choice