Central Bank Independence, Transparency and Accountability: Constructing a New Index

Central bank, as a public organization which is entrusted with a public mandate, belongs to the Government, latum sensus, similar to the affiliation of the legal, executive and judiciary powers. Central bank operates and interacts within several governmental entities, having at its' ground a governance structure specific to each country. The relationship between central bank and the judiciary, legal and executive powers has generated, lately, considerable debates. A central bank must be accompanied with a high degree of independence for fulfilling the entrusted mandate. This must be the subject of public governance in a representative democracy, since the central bank is entrusted with a public mandate. The basic problems referring to this aspect are the way for structuring and assessing the relationships between the central bank and the legal power or the politicians and the executive power (Chief of the Cabinet or the President) and the ministries; the construction mode of an efficient mix of independence, transparency and accountability for assuring that the central bank will fulfill with great success it's tasks. In this article it is provided a new index of central bank independence, transparency and accountability in order to assess this important mix between the three most important features of a central bank: independence, transparency and accountability.