THE EFFECT OF THE CENTRAL BANK INDEPENDENCE ON BUDGET DEFICITS: AN INVESTIGATION FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The issue of the independence of central banks has been intensely debated, especially in the last three decades. The idea of the independence of central banks, whose primary objective is to ensure price stability, is shaped on the axis theoretically by time inconsistency, public choice theory, and unpleasant monetarist arithmetic. The institutional development, which closely concerns both developed and developing countries, emphasizes the independence of monetary policy in terms of combatting inflation. Independent central banks are driving governments to ensure fiscal discipline, while non-independent central banks can allow governments to implement loose fiscal policy. In the literature, the number of recent studies addressing the impact of central bank independence on budget deficits seems to be insufficient. Generalized Least Squares (GLS) and Hausman-Taylor (HT) methods were applied to test the relationship between variables. In this article, which examines the relationship between central bank independence and budget deficits, a panel data analysis was conducted for 66 developing countries in the period 1980-2014. For the period covered, central bank independence indicators, such as the head of the central bank turnover rate (MBDH) and legal independence (YB) are time-invariant variables. Therefore, since the central bank independence variable and dummy variables eliminate individual specific effects, the fixed effect model could not be used. Generalized Least Squares (GLS) and Hausman-Taylor (HT) methods were applied to test whether there was a relationship between the variables. In the study, which discussed both legal and actual independence of central banks, a negative relationship was found between central bank actual independence and budget deficits