The degree of legal central bank independence in MENA countries: International comparisons and macroeconomic implications

Central bank independence (CBI) has been a widely explored fi eld of research for industrialised countries since the seminal work of Alesina (1988). During the fi rst half of the 1990s other prominent papers (see section 1 below) helped to characterise more clearly the concept of independence in order to provide an adequate taxonomy of the phenomenon and to explore the alleged relation between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance, which is particularly complex in the current context of increasing globalisation.1