Quality (philosophy)

Incentive

Financial system

Monetary policy

Philosophy

Developing country

Microeconomics

Panel data

Fiscal policy

Economics

Politics

Political science

Monetary economics

Demographic economics

Epistemology

Econometrics

Central bank

General election

International economics

Economic growth

Journal of African Business

The study primarily investigates if the behavior and effectiveness of CBI on fiscal policy varies between non-election and election years. It also examines whether the effectiveness of CBI in improving fiscal performance is enhanced by higher institutional quality. Using recent CBI data f on 48 African countries, 90 other developing countries and 40 developed countries over the period 1970–2012, we apply a two-stage system GMM with Windmeijer small sample robust correction estimator and find that due to the strong incentives of political authorities to influence economic outcomes in election years, CBI has stronger effects on fiscal performance in election years compared to non-election years in developed countries only. However, given higher levels of institutional quality, CBI has stronger effects on fiscal performance in election years compared to non-election years in Africa and other developing countries also.

Do Independent Central Banks Exhibit Varied Behaviour in Election and Non-Election Years?: The Case of Fiscal Policy in Africa