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Economic Commentary

Three Myths about Central Banks

Do central banks control the business cycle? Should price stability be their only monetary policy goal? Do politicians give up a degree of power and gain nothing personally when they grant central banks independence? This Commentary argues that none of these widely held notions is true. The Commentary is based on a speech presented to participants at the conference on the Origins and Evolution of Central Banking, sponsored by the Central Bank Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, in May 2001.

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Miller, Geoffrey. 2002. “Three Myths about Central Banks.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 11/1/2002.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International