Employing unique representative survey data from New Zealand collected in 2016 and 2019, we study public knowledge about and attitude towards a specific monetary policy institution, the Policy Targets Agreement (PTA). We assess how much the population knows about the PTA and also ask whether our respondents support a clause in the PTA that allows the government to over-ride the RBNZ if the government deems it necessary. Responses to that question are interpreted as attitudes towards central bank independence (CBI). Using logit regression, we study which characteristics make people favour more CBI. Subjective and objective knowledge about the RBNZ and monetary policy increases support for CBI, whereas voting for a national-orientated party and trusting the government reduces it. We then investigate how the 2018 amendment of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act of 1989, effective April 2019, affected answers. The population does not have a clear view on whether CBI should be expanded; instead, people's attitudes seems to be dominated by a status-quo view. Overall, our results raise doubts that the PTA had a strong impact on anchoring inflation expectations among households.

In this paper, we study the determinants of daily spreads for emerging market sovereign credit default swaps (CDSs) over the period April 2002–December 2011. Using GARCH models, we find, first, that daily CDS spreads for emerging market sovereigns are more related to global and regional risk premia than to country-specific risk factors. This result is particularly evident during the second subsample (August 2007–December 2011), where neither macroeconomic variables nor country ratings significantly explain CDS spread changes. Second, measures of US bond, equity, and CDX High Yield returns, as well as emerging market credit returns, are the most dominant drivers of CDS spread changes. Finally, our analysis suggests that CDS spreads are more strongly influenced by international spillover effects during periods of market stress than during normal times.