New Global Dataset Rewrites What Counts as Central Bank Independence

📌 What the Dataset Covers

This dataset provides yearly measures of de jure central bank independence (CBI) for 182 countries from 1970 to 2012, representing the most comprehensive global coverage to date. It documents statutory reforms that affect CBI, records the direction of each reform (increases or decreases), and captures the attributes required to construct the Cukierman, Webb and Neyapty index.

📚 How the Data Was Constructed

Annual coding identifies and classifies legal changes to central bank statutes across a wide and diverse country sample. Key features include:

• Systematic identification of statutory reforms and their direction (strengthening or restricting CBI)
• Inclusion of the attributes necessary to build the Cukierman, Webb and Neyapty index
• Coverage that extends well beyond prior datasets, adding almost 100 countries typically omitted from earlier work

🔍 Key Findings

• The broader coverage challenges conventional wisdom about where and when central bank reforms occurred: increases and restrictions are found in decades and regions previously viewed as largely unaffected.
• Inclusion of many previously overlooked countries suggests that sample selection in earlier studies may have substantially biased results.
• Simple analyses show that the observed associations between CBI and macroeconomic outcomes—inflation, unemployment, and growth—are highly sensitive to which countries are included in the sample.
• The dataset documents numerous cases of CBI decreases (legal restrictions), whereas prior datasets generally emphasize CBI increases.

💡 Why It Matters

This resource enables testing of competing explanations for the determinants and consequences of CBI using a truly global sample. It also serves as a useful instrument for cross-national research on topics such as liberalization, policy diffusion, political institutions, democratization, and responses to financial crises.