Proponents of central-bank independence argue that insulating monetary policy from elected officials produces lower average inflation. The reasoning rests on a credibility problem: politicians facing elections are tempted to stimulate the economy with easy money for short-run gains in employment, accepting inflation that arrives later. Anticipating this, the public builds higher inflation expectations into wages and prices, so the economy ends up with elevated inflation but no lasting employment benefit. An independent central banker, shielded from electoral pressure and charged narrowly with price stability, faces no such temptation; the public, trusting this, holds expectations down, and inflation falls without sacrificing output. Critics counter that the correlation between independence and low inflation may not be causal. Countries that prize price stability, they argue, both grant their central banks independence and pursue disciplined policy for the same underlying reason—a cultural aversion to inflation—so independence may be a symptom of the preference rather than its cause. The dispute is difficult to settle because the very conditions that lead a society to insulate its central bank are entangled with the conditions that would keep inflation low regardless.