In recent years, the appointment of central bankers has become a highly topical matter in politics, the media and in academic circles. At the time of writing, bets are on about who will succeed US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke in January 2014. And earlier in 2013 the appointments of new central bank governors in the United Kingdom (Canadian Mark Carney), Japan (Haruhiko Kuroda) and India (Raghuram Rajan) received similar attention and concern. The increased focus on the central bankers as individuals can be explained by their quite active roles in crisis management following the financial and economic turmoil that began in mid 2007. Acting far beyond the predictable 'script' of keeping inflation low, since the start of the crisis central bankers have been making very difficult, and unconventional, policy decisions in a way no institutional set-up was designed to manage prior to the crisis.
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