Perhaps the original approach to the study of central bank power suffered from
an excess of legalism and gave too little weight to practice and personalities. In any
case, it set off a search for behavioural measures of independence that would capture
practice. Cukierman (1992) found that turnover of the head of the central bank
correlated better with inflation outcomes than did the legal measures. Of course, this
measure is far from perfect. On the one hand, a rubber stamp for the finance ministry
may enjoy a long tenure; on the other hand, for example, G William Miller’s
departure from the Federal Reserve in favour of Paul Volcker almost surely helped
lower US inflation. The association of governor turnover and inflation, however,
derived its strength from cases in which the turnover was above 0.25 (an average
term of less than four years). In Cukierman’s Asian–Pacific sample, only two
countries come in with turnover above this figure, so perhaps there should be no
surprise that there is, if anything, a negative association between governor turnover
and inflation (Table 9).28