Data on Central Bank Governors
This database contains information on the term in office of central bank governors for almost all countries in the world starting from the year 1970. Most information was received directly from central banks. Some central banks provide data on previous governors on their website, while for many other central banks we got the information by writing emails and letters. Additional sources are Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's Central Bank Directory and the databases introduced by Cukierman et al. (1992) and Sturm and De Haan (2001).
When using this data, please cite:
Dreher, Axel, Jan-Egbert Sturm and Jakob de Haan (2010), When is a Central Bank Governor Replaced? Evidence Based on a New Data Set, Journal of Macroeconomics, forthcoming.
Dreher, Axel, Jan-Egbert Sturm and Jakob de Haan (2008), Does High Inflation Cause Central Bankers to Lose Their Job? Evidence Based on A New Data Set, European Journal of Political Economy, Volume 24 (2008), Number 4, pages 778-787.
An older working paper version is available as KOF Working Paper No. 167.
Updated April 15, 2010
Note: in the EJPE paper only data up to and including 2004 have been used. See 'changes' for revisions in these data. Changes with respect to the March 15, 2008 and April 15, 2009 versions are also detailed there.