Viral V Acharya: On the importance of independent regulatory institutions - the case of the central bank

Text of the A. D. Shroff Memorial Lecture by Dr Viral V Acharya, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai, 26 October 2018.

No analogy is perfect; yet, analogies help convey things better. At times, a straw man has to be set up to make succinctly a practical or even an academic point. Occasionally, however, real life examples come along beautifully to make a communicator's work easier. Let me start today with an antecedent from 2010 as it is particularly apposite for the theme of my talk:

"My time at the central bank is up and that is why I have decided to leave my post definitively, with the satisfaction of my duty fulfilled," Mr Martin Redrado, Argentina's central bank chief, told a news conference late on Friday, January 29, 2010.

"We have arrived at this situation because of the national government's permanent trampling of institutions," he said. "Basically, I am defending two main concepts: the independence of the central bank in our decision-making process and that the reserves should be used for monetary and financial stability."