tailieunhanh - WORKING PAPER NO. 08-5 CENTRAL BANK INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE AND EFFECTIVE CENTRAL BANKING: CROSS-COUNTRY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

If these conditions were met, it is possible that the postal savings market would shrink drastically or even disappear. But it is also possible that a postal bank can play a beneficial role as an alternative to mandatory insurance for household deposits. This was, in fact, the reasoning that led postal savings to be accepted in the United States in 1910 – a time when the moral hazard problems involved in government insurance schemes were widely recognized, and postal savings was regarded as a less dangerous alternative. However, neither of the requirements – full-cost pricing and neutral recycling – has been consistently met in the United States. | Central Bank Institutional Structure and Effective Central Banking Cross-Country Empirical Evidence Iftekhar Hasan Cary L. Wellington Professor Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Bank of Finland and Loretta J. Mester Senior Vice President and Director of Research Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Adjunct Professor Finance Department The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania April 2008 The authors thank Sally Burke for editorial assistance. Please address correspondence to Iftekhar Hasan at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th Street Pittsburgh Building Troy NY 12180 USA phone 1 518-2762525 fax 1 518-276-8661 email hasan@ and to Loretta J. Mester at Research Department Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Ten Independence Mall Philadelphia PA 19106-1574 USA phone 1 215-5743807 fax 1 215-574-4303 email . The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or the Bank of Finland. This paper is available free of charge at econ wps. Central Bank Institutional Structure and Effective Central Banking Cross-Country Empirical Evidence Abstract Over the last decade the legal and institutional frameworks governing central banks and financial market regulatory authorities throughout the world have undergone significant changes. This has created new interest in better understanding the roles played by organizational structures accountability and transparency in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of central banks in achieving their objectives and ultimately yielding better economic outcomes. Although much has been written pointing out the potential role institutional form can play in central bank performance little empirical work has been done to investigate the hypothesis that institution form is related to performance. This paper attempts to help fill .