Monetary Policy by Committee:Consensus, Chairman Dominance or Simple Majority?

Alessandro Riboni and Francisco Ruge-Murcia

Cahiers de recherche from Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques

Abstract: This paper studies the theoretical and empirical implications of monetary policy making by committee under three different voting protocols. The protocols are a consensus model, where super-majority is required for a policy change; an agenda-setting model, where the chairman controls the agenda; and a simple majority model, where policy is determined by the median member. These protocols give preeminence to different aspects of the actual decision making process and capture the observed heterogeneity in formal procedures across central banks. The models are estimated by Maximum Likehood using interest rate decisions by the committees of five central banks, namely the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swedish Riksbank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve. For all central banks, results indicate that the consensus model is statically superior to the alternative models. This suggests that despite institutionnal differences, committees share unwritten rules and informal procedures that deliver observationally equivalent policy decisions.

Keywords: Committees; voting models; status-quo bias; median voter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 E5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-cdm, nep-eec, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://hdl.handle.net/1866/2215 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Monetary Policy by Committee: Consensus, Chairman Dominance, or Simple Majority? (2010)
Working Paper: Monetary Policy by Committee: Consensus, Chairman Dominance or Simple Majority? (2008)
Working Paper: Monetary Policy by Committee: Consensus, Chairman Dominance or Simple Majority? (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtl:montde:2008-02

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