The Private Perceptions Regarding the National Bank of Romania’s Independence

Abstract

The independence represents an essentialcondition for the central banks that conduct aninflation targeting monetary policy. According to theinternational economic literature, the central banks’political and economical independence influencethe formation of the private inflation expectations.Even if the aspect of central bank independenceis new in our economic literature, we have somevaluable papers about this subject. These papersstudy the role of NBR independence or analyze theevolution of the NBR independence. Our approachis different. The law 312/2004 stipulates that NBRis an independent public institution, but we wantto see if the society has the same perception. Inconsequence, we decided to study the privateperceptions regarding the National Bank ofRomania’s independence. To achieve this goal, weevaluated the civil society perceptions regarding theinfluence of presidency, government, parliamentand political parties in the NBR’s activity. Ourresearch is based on the data gathered duringthe time span March 2007 – February 2008.