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Monetary Policy Committee (monetary + policy_committee)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting60%

Selected Abstracts

RATIONAL PARTISAN THEORY, UNCERTAINTY, AND SPATIAL VOTING: EVIDENCE FOR THE BANK OF ENGLAND'S MPC

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2010
ARNAB BHATTACHARJEE
The transparency and openness of the monetary policy-making process at the Bank of England has provided very detailed information on both the decisions of individual members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and the information on which they are based. In this paper, we consider this decision-making process in the context of a model in which inflation forecast targeting is used, but there is heterogeneity among the members of the committee. We find that rational partisan theory can explain spatial voting behavior under forecast uncertainty about the output gap. Internally generated forecasts of output and market-generated expectations of medium-term inflation provide the best description of discrete changes in interest rates, in combination with uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment. There is also a role for developments in asset, housing and labor markets. Further, spatial voting patterns clearly differentiate between internally and externally apzpointed members of the MPC. The results have important implications for committee design and the conduct of monetary policy. [source]

From doves to hawks: A spatial analysis of voting in the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2010
SIMON HIX
This article examines the making of monetary policy in the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2008 by analysing voting behaviour in the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It provides a new set of measures for the monetary policy preferences of individual MPC members by estimating a Bayesian item response model. The article demonstrates the usefulness of these measures by comparing the ideal points of outgoing MPC members with their successors and by looking at changes over time in the median ideal point on the MPC. The analysis indicates that the British Government has been able to move the position of the median voter on the MPC through its appointments to the Committee. This highlights the importance of central bank appointments for monetary policy. [source]

FEDERAL RESERVE TRANSCRIPT PUBLICATION AND REGIONAL REPRESENTATION

CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 2 2010
ELLEN E. MEADE
This article looks at disagreement within the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee, the Federal Open Market Committee or FOMC, following a change in transparency practices taken in 1993 to publish verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings. Other literature has examined the effects of opening the FOMC's deliberations to public view and provided empirical evidence that the publication of transcripts made policymakers less willing to voice disagreement with the chairman's policy proposal. This article adds to that work by examining whether regional variables are important to the analysis and whether the transcription effects are robust to the inclusion of regional variables. The results indicate that transcription effects are indeed robust, regardless of the regional indicator used, and that larger Federal Reserve districts may be more likely to voice agreement with a given policy proposal. (JEL E42, E58, E65, F33) [source]

Outsiders at the Bank of England's MPC

JOURNAL OF MONEY, CREDIT AND BANKING, Issue 6 2009
PETRA GERLACH-KRISTEN
monetary policy committees; Bank of England; outsiders; recession aversion The monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Bank of England consists of five internal and four external members. We study the voting record and show that outsiders dissent more often than insiders and tend to prefer lower rates, especially during economic downturns. Moreover, dissents by outsiders help forecast future interest rate changes, in contrast to dissents by insiders. A model in which outsiders in contrast to insiders are "recession averse" and more uncertain regarding the appropriate level of interest rates replicates the observed voting pattern well. [source]