The ownership of central banks David Bholat and Karla Martinez Gutierrez Around the world, central banks have a number of different ownership structures. At one end of the spectrum are central banks, like the Bank of England, that are wholly owned by the public sector. At the other end are central banks, like the Banca d’Italia, whose shareholders are wholly private sector entities. And there are central banks, like the Bank of Japan, that lie in-between. But do these differences matter? In this blog post, we explore the variety of central bank ownership structures, both historically and globally. We also suggest areas for future research on the topic. The separation of central bank ownership and control Ownership is a complex concept, a bundle of rights and responsibilities. In ordinary language, if I say I own a bike, then this implies I possess the bike and can use it as I please. Ownership implies control. However, as Thorstein Veblen, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means first observed, control is sometimes unbundled from ownership in modern corporations. The owners of corporations ( shareholders) are usually abstracted from their day-to-day operations. Instead, control of corporate resources is ordinarily exercised by its management. Therefore, to say that I own shares in a corporation has a much narrower meaning than when I say I own a bike. In the case of a corporation, I am mainly saying that I have a financial interest in the business, specifically, that I am a residual claimant on the