Suchergebnisse

We analyze the effects of imperfectly known central banker's preferences on optimal linear contracts offered by the government and an interest group. These effects depend on the type of uncertainty faced by the principals. When the central bank's output target is uncertain the results by Campoy and Negrete (Public Choice 137:197-206, 2008) under perfectly known preferences obtain. Uncertainty about the central banker's degree of conservatism or about its degree of "selfishness" has a multiplicative impact on the principals' instruments in the agent's best response function; this may generate an inflation bias independently of the type of contract offered by the interest group. Adapted from the source document.

In a unionized economy with endogenous fiscal policy central bank transparency has two contrasting effects on wages, the relative strength of which determines the macroeconomic performance. This finding allows us to demonstrate that (i) if the central bank is populist the effect of transparency is negative, and (ii) if policy makers are sufficiently conservative and the government is active, transparency decreases inflation and unemployment, but opposite results apply if a populist government faces a tight fiscal constraint. Macroeconomic volatility disappears with full transparency and increases, in general, with opacity, but the relationship is hump‐shaped when the central bank is strongly populist.