Globalization And Monetary-policy Independence In India

Globalization of the early 1990s is thought to have caused the loss of monetary-policy independence in India. I find that India's monetary-policy independence is anchored in the exchange-rate regime along with its state of foreign-exchange reserves, and not necessarily in globalization per se. India significantly followed US interest rates even in the absence of globalization in the 1960s when the country faced foreign-exchange constraints and maintained a fixed exchange rate. From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s, India exercised monetary-policy independence under a floating exchange-rate regime. The loss of monetary-policy independence since the early 1990s is not attributable to globalization per se, but mainly to the stable exchange-rate policy of India, which heavily resembles the policy of the 1960s.