VOX  CEPR Policy Portal

Recent events have heightened concerns that central banks with private shareholders might differ in their financial behaviour from purely public central banks, perhaps focusing excessively on profits, dividends, and risks to their balance sheets. Using information on shareholding and new data on governance rules for 35 central banks, this column finds no significant difference in financial behaviour based on ownership, due, it would appear, to governance arrangements restraining policy toward private shareholders and, more generally, affecting central bank behaviour.