金融学专业外文翻译---国际货币和金融安排：现状与未来

中文3950字外文原文International Monetary and Financial Arrangements:Present and Future3. National economic policies under the present international monetary systemIn this part, we examine central bank independence and monetary and fiscal policies under the present international monetary system. We also examine global financial integration and the effectiveness of monetary policy.3.1. Central bank independenceIn recent years, many nations have passed laws removing government control on their central bank (i.e., making their central bank more independent) in order to overcome the inflationary bias that was otherwise believed to exist in the conduct of monetary policy. The central banks of some nations, such as Switzerland and Germany, have enjoyed a high degree of independence during most of the postwar period. Recently, Canada, Chile, and New Zealand enacted legislation to make their central banks more independent. In May 1997, England also did so. A common ingredient of economic reforms in Latin America and in the ex-communist nations of Central and Eastern Europe has been the creation of independent central banks—at least legally—if not yet in their actual day-to-day operation. The Maastricht Treaty prohibits central banks from taking instructions from the government, as one of the requirements for monetary union in Europe. To ensure central bank independence, the Treaty also requires that central bank governors be appointed for a term of at leastfive years. More importantly, the Treaty forbids central banks from purchasing debt instruments directly from the government and from providing credit facilities to the government. This is done in the belief that a central bank that is free from political pressure would achieve a lower inflation rate.But what is meant by central bank independence? Fisher (1995) introduced the distinction between goal independence and instrument independence. A central bank has goal independence if it can set its own goals, such as the rate of inflation that the nation should aim for. Instrument independence means that the central bank has control over the levers of monetary policy. That is, it has no obligation to finance government deficits, directly or indirectly, and that it has the power to set interest rates. Of course, a central bank that has goal and instrument independence can set its own monetary goals and is free to use the instruments at its disposal to achieve those goals. Even in nations with the most independent central banks, however, the government rather than the central bank usually has a final say on the type of exchange rate arrangement for the nation to have, and on changing the exchange rates in a fixed exchange rate system, or on foreign exchange market interventions to affect the level of exchange rates if the nation chooses to have a flexible exchange rate system (Capie, 1998).Theoretically, there are two different approaches to central bank independence. One is the conservative-banker approach of Rogoff (1985) and the other is the principal-agent approach of Walsh (1995). In the conservative-banker approach, the central bank has both goal and instrument independence. Presumably, the conservative banker will weigh deviations of both inflation and output from target levels in setting monetary policy, but with a bias in favor of lower inflation, even if this comes at the expense of lower growth. In the principal-agent approach, on the other hand, the central banker has instrument independence, but not goal independence. That is, the government sets the monetary goal, such as the rate of inflation for the nation, and then the central bank is free to employ whatever monetary instruments it has at its disposal in trying to meet the monetary goal. Theprincipal-agent goal is most explicit in the case of New Zealand, where the governor of the central bank formally agrees to meet the inflation target set by the government, with his job on the line if he fails to meet the target. In Canada and England, it is the reputation of the central bank that is on the line if the inflation target is exceeded.Today, there is general agreement that a central bank should have instrument, but not goal independence. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the monetarygoal of the nation should reflect the social welfare function of the nation and not just the preferences of the central bank governor. The second is that there is the need to coordinate monetary and fiscal policies to avoid their operating at cross purposes of each other. Central bank accountability, however, is needed to ensure that the monetary goals of the nation are, in fact, pursued by the nation’s central bank. In the case of New Zealand the governor of the central bank is accountable to the finance minister. In the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank or the Fed (the US central bank) is generally accountable to Congress, which must ratify the choice of the chairman of the Fed and can summon him to explain his policies. In Germany, the Bundesbank is accountable to the public at large for its policies in defense of the currency.In recent years, a growing number of countries are following the lead of New Zealand in setting explicit inflation targets for the central bank. This provides transparency and accountability, which are very important in establishing credibility for the government’s monetary policy. The more credible a central bank is, the more it will be able to cut interest rates in a slowdown without triggering higher inflationary expectations and hence higher long-term interest rates, or raising interest rates to curb emerging inflationary pressures without the fear of triggering a recession. It is to increase transparency and accountability, and hence its credibility and effectiveness, that the central bank of several countries, including the United States, have recently started to explain their decision-making process (including the lagged publication of the minutes of their meetings by the US Fed) and operating procedure in their conduct of monetary policy. The fact, however, that the US Fed, as opposed to most other central banks, is constitutionally required to pursue both price stability and full employment, reduces its effectiveness as an inflation fighter when a conflict arises between its two goals (Salvatore, 1998d).3.2. Central bank independence and inflationAs expected, a number of empirical studies have shown an inverse relationship between central bank independence and the rate of inflation in industrial countries. That is, the more independent the central bank of an industrial country is, the lower the rate of inflation in the nation. One of the most comprehensive of these studies is the one by Alesina and Summers (1993). The authors included the following 16industrial countries in the study: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.The sample period was from 1955 to 1988. As in previous studies, the authors found a negative correlation between the level of central bank independence and the rate of inflation. They also found that the more independent a central bank was, the smaller was the variability of the inflation rate (because of the positive correlation between the level and variability of inflation).As it is well known, however, correlation does not establish causality. That is, the negative correlation between central bank independence and inflation found in empirical studies does not imply that the former causes the latter. It may very well be that countries with a stronger aversion to inflation are more likely to give more independence to their central banks. Thus, it is the inflation aversion in the nation that gives rise both to lower inflation and to a more independent central bank in the nation, rather than a more independent central bank being responsible (i.e., causing) lower inflation. Unless, however, we believe that laws and institutions are entirely irrelevant and have no effect whatsoever on economic performance (here the rate of inflation) we must conclude that a more independent central bank is more likely, other things equal, to lead to lower inflation than a less independent central bank.As support for central bank independence has increased around the world, so has the tendency to entrust to central banks the sole function of achieving a given inflation target or range. This, however, raises the question of whether it would be more appropriate to entrust the central bank with a target that is more directly controllable by the central bank, such as the growth of a narrow money aggregate, rather than a specific inflation target. Setting an inflation target, however, seems more appropriate today in view of the collapse of the relationship between money growth and inflation in one country after another.As a result, it is better to assign an explicit inflation target to the central bank and provide it with instrument independence to pursue the inflation target. As to why the central bank should be given a specific inflation target rather than agrowth-of-real-GDP or rate-of-unemployment target, the answer is that inflation is amonetary phenomenon while the rate of growth of real GDP and the rate of unemployment are real phenomena. Real phenomena are, of course, affected by monetary phenomena, but here the chain of causality depends on policies and institutions that are not under the direct control of the central bank. In giving a specific inflation target to the central bank, it is important to point out that fixed exchange rates are less inflationary than flexible exchange rates.Thus, a country that is trying to move from a high to a low inflation environment would do well to adopt a fixed rather than a variable exchange rate system as a means of anchoring monetary policy and market expectations. Many developing countries, however, have been moving toward greater exchange-rate flexibility in order to cope better with big swings in foreign capital flows.Although many empirical studies have found a negative correlation between central bank independence and inflation in industrial countries, this is not the case for developing countries. Cukierman (1992) found a positive, not a negative, relationship between central bank independence and inflation for a group of 70 developing countries that he studied over the 1950–1989 period. This, however, may be due tothe fact that the central banks of many developing countries are independent legally but not in reality, as evidenced by the fact that they continue to finance government deficits. This has certainly been the case for Mexico and Venezuela. For example, when Venezuela suffered a wave of bank failures in 1994, it decided that the best way to address the problem was to print billions of bolivars and impose capital controls. The same happened in Mexico following the deep financial crisis that started at the end of 1994.3.3. Central bank independence, the real economy, and fiscal deficitsDoes the lower inflation rate with an independent central bank come at the expense of growth of output for the nation? Alesina and Summers (1993) found no negative correlation between central bank independence and average growth of real GDP or the variability of growth of real GDP for the same 16 industrial countries that they used to examine the relationship between central bank independence andinflation over the 1955–1988 period. Barro (1995) and Sarel (1996) confirm this for inflation rates below 8%. Thus, it does not seem that central banks in industrial nations trade a lower growth rate of output for the sake of a lower rate of inflation.The same conclusion was reached for industrial nations in another study by Cukierman, Kalaitzidakis, Summers, and Webb (1992) by regressing the nation’s growth rate of real GDP on the degree of central bank independence, the initial level of real GDP in the nation, the initial level of primary and secondary education in the nation, and the nation’s terms of trade. For developing nations, however, Cukierman, Kalaitzidakis, Summers, and Webb found that central bank independence did have a significantly positive effect on growth. When inflation is high, as in most developing countries, and to the extent that a more independent central bank is associated with a higher inflation rate (which encourages growth), a more independent central bank is then also associated with more rapid growth. Since industrial nations do not generally face high inflation, this vehicle to higher growth is not available to them.Empirical studies were also conducted to examine the relationship between central bank independence and fiscal deficits as a percentage of GDP in the nation. The expectation was that a more independent central bank would be able to resist better government efforts to monetize fiscal deficits and thus lead to lower long-run average fiscal deficits as a percentage of GDP in the nation. Such a negative relationship was in fact found by Parkin (1987) and Grilli et al. (1991) for industrial countries. Thus, the overall conclusion that can be reached from empirical studies to date is that an independent central bank is associated with lower inflation rates and lower fiscal deficits as a percentage of GDP but is unrelated to growth in industrial nations.Although empirical studies have found no relationship between central bank independence and the rate of economic growth in industrial nations, there is a theoretical reason for expecting that a central bank that can set its own inflation target and operate independently of the fiscal authority of the nation can lead to a lower rate of growth in the nation. This can result when there is a conflict between the goals of the monetary and the fiscal authority of the nation.Then monetary and fiscal policies can move at cross purposes from each other and result in suboptimal economicperformance for the nation. Thus, a central bank can be too independent. For example, a central bank that is excessively inflation averse, such as the Bundesbank, may excessively restrain the growth of the nation. Better economic performance for the nation would result with the coordination of fiscal and monetary policies. This can be accomplished by giving the central bank instrument but not goal independence.Thus, the general tendency for economists today of endorsing the separation of power in the conduct of monetary and fiscal policies may not be the best policy to maximize non-inflationary growth in the nation (see Nordhaus, 1994). Better results can be obtained by the coordination of monetary and fiscal policies. It is not just that in the absence of such a coordination, fiscal and monetary authorities might pursue contradictory goals. Suboptimal results may arise simply because of the different time horizon for monetary and fiscal policies. Monetary authorities usually have a longer time horizon than fiscal authorities and often respond only slowly and cautiously to changed economic conditions. Because of this, fiscal authorities might not be willing to adopt deficit-reduction policies and risk an economic slowdown (which may cost them re-election) if they cannot be sure that their contractionary fiscal policies will be offset by sufficiently strong and timely expansionary monetary policies.外文翻译国际货币和金融安排：现状与未来3.在目前的国际货币体系下的国家经济政策在这一部分，我们研究在现行国际货币体系下的中央银行的独立性、货币和财政政策。