Analysis of the Effect of Central Bank Transparency and Independence on Productivity Growth in Iran

This study has investigated the effect of Central Banks transparency and independence on productivity growth during 1981–2018 in Iranian economy. Transparency and independence of central bank were measured by Dincer and Eichengreen index and Cukierman index respectively. The variables in this study which are in annual form are central bank transparency, central bank independence, GDP growth, productivity growth, inflation rate and free trade. Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method was used for model estimation. The coefficient of the error term is negative, statistically significant and equal to -0.308. It can be concluded that 30% of the short-run disequilibrium is adjusted to achieve long-run equilibrium. The results show that the transparency of the central bank has a positive effect and the coefficient is equal to 0.36 on productivity growth in the short-run, but it is effective on productivity growth in the long-run equal to 1.08. In the short-run, the independence of the central bank has a negative and significant effect on productivity growth equal to -3.09, but in the long-run the effect of this variable is positive and equal to 1.09.