LAUSR

Goodhart and Lastra (Open Econ Rev 29:49–68, 2018) lay out the mechanisms through which populist political movements may affect central bank independence. This paper provides the first empirical evidence that one aspect commonly attributed to populism, namely national identity politics, has indeed negatively impacted on central bank independence in developing countries. Combining existing datasets on central bank independence and political variables in developing countries, panel regressions are run for a sample of 113 countries during 1975–2012. Results prove robust to various specifications and macroeconomic as well as institutional control variables.