We provide a new explanation for why central banks have become transparent over the last three decades. We apply recently developed social interaction panel regression models for the observational data, which allow the identification of peer effects. The identification is based on variations in the past monetary policy regime exogenously determined with respect to transparency. Previous literature has argued that domestic factors such as macroeconomic stability were behind the trend toward greater transparency. In contrast, our results indicate that transparency primarily increased because of a favorable global environment and, importantly, because of the peer effects among central bankers. Central bankers thus learned from each other’s experiences regarding transparency.

我们为中央银行为何在过去的三十年中变得透明化提供了新的解释。我们将最近开发的社交互动面板回归模型应用于观测数据，从而可以确定同伴效应。识别是基于过去在透明度方面外生确定的货币政策制度中的变化。先前的文献认为，诸如宏观经济稳定之类的国内因素在提高透明度的趋势背后。相反，我们的结果表明，透明度的提高主要是由于有利的全球环境，更重要的是，由于中央银行之间的同伴效应。中央银行因此从彼此关于透明度的经验中学到了东西。