Shedding light on a blind spot

According to the principles of modern central bank governance, accountability is the necessary counterpart of independence. The empirical literature on central bank governance has produced some indices of central bank accountability, but on a much smaller scale than those of central bank independence. 

Empirical research on the accountability of central banks in the Eurosystem is particularly lacking. Broadly speaking, recent empirical research focuses on the ECB practices and national central banks have not received much attention. 

This paper intends to shed light on the blind spots of the accountability of central banks in the Eurosystem. There are both gaps in the empirical literature and a lack of attention to the question of the accountability of Eurosystem central banks although these central banks continue to play a very important role, well beyond the tasks performed in the framework of the Eurosystem, for instance in banking supervision. To do this, the paper updates the indices of accountability for the national central banks of the Eurosystem, analyses and compares the accountability settings of national central banks. Despite homogeneity in the overall level of accountability, national central banks have very heterogeneous procedures when it comes to reporting to political authorities.

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