Voting Transparency in a Monetary Union

26 Pages Posted: 18 Jul 2005

See all articles by Hans Gersbach

Hans Gersbach

ETH Zurich - CER-ETH -Center of Economic Research; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Volker Hahn

University of Konstanz

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 2005

Abstract

We examine whether the central bank council of a monetary union should publish its voting records when members are appointed by national politicians. We show that the publication of voting records lowers overall welfare if the private benefits of holding office are sufficiently low. High private benefits of central bankers lower overall welfare under opacity, as they induce European central bankers to care more about being re-appointed than about beneficial policy outcomes. We show that opacity and low private benefits jointly guarantee the optimal welfare level. Moreover, we suggest that non-renewable terms for national central bankers and delegating the appointment of all council members to a European agency would be desirable.

Keywords: Central banks, transparency, voting, monetary union

JEL Classification: E58, D70

Suggested Citation

Gersbach, Hans and Hahn, Volker, Voting Transparency in a Monetary Union (July 2005). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=757744 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.757744

Hans Gersbach

ETH Zurich - CER-ETH -Center of Economic Research ( email )

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