Figure 4: Governance and Accountability of Government Agencies (2021 versus 2011) 7
Sum of individual characteristics
6 5 4 3 2 1
Euro area
United States
Turkey
South Africa
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Mexico
Korea 2021
United Kingdom
2011
Japan
Italy
Indonesia
India
Germany
France
China
Canada
Brazil
Australia
Argentina
0
Source: Annual data from the 2021 update of the 2019 database and the 2011 database from the World Bank’s Bank Regulation and Supervision Survey (see www.worldbank.org/en/research/brief/BRSS). Notes: The height of the bars is determined by scores on the following six questions: What body/agency supervises banks for prudential purposes? Has a banking supervisory agency mandate been written? Are financial system responsibilities included in the mandate? Is an integrated financial supervisory agency covering all significant financial institutions? Is a banking supervisor responsible for macroprudential supervision? What body is responsible for financial consumer protection laws/regulations? Each question receives a score of one or zero, except for one question where the score ranges from zero to two. The maximum score is seven; the minimum score is zero. See the appendix for the questions used in constructing the index. The higher the number, the more attributes a country has.
intensity with which the population resorts to cashless payments. The former highlights, once again, privacy and security concerns while the latter reflects the potential of cashless payments to transform cross-border payments. It will be noted, of course, that there is no consensus in these areas about what constitutes best practice. There is likely an element whereby the same institutional environment will not suit all countries, especially ones as diverse as those in the G20. Indeed, cross-country diversity may be welcome, but since CBDCs are expected to potentially disrupt cross-border money flows, the roles of governance and accountability will be critical to its success.
14
CIGI Papers No. 261 — February 2022 • Pierre L. Siklos
CBDC and Central Bank Mission Creep Both governance and accountability matters were instrumental in the transformation of the role and influence of central banks since the late 1980s as evidenced by the global rise in the autonomy and transparency of central banks. It seems that these features are similarly important in carrying out plans to roll out CBDC. However, unlike these earlier developments, which led to a narrowing of the mission of central banks to primarily maintain
