TY - BOOK AU - McCallum,Bennett T. ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Crucial Issues Concerning Central Bank Independence T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 1996/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - May 1996; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - This paper argues, first, that it is inappropriate to presume that central banks will, in the absence of any tangible precommitment technology, inevitably behave in a `discretionary' fashion that implies an inflationary bias. Furthermore, there is no necessary tradeoff between `flexibility and commitment.' Second, to the extent that the absence of any precommitment technology is nevertheless a problem, it will apply to a consolidated central bank-plus-government entity as well as to the central bank alone. Thus contracts between governments and central banks do not overcome the motivation for dynamic inconsistency, they merely relocate it. Several implications are discussed UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w5597 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w5597 ER -