Policy-making of the European Central Bank during the crisis: Do personalities matter?

James Basham and Aanor Roland

No 38/2014, IPE Working Papers from Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE)

Abstract: The European sovereign debt crisis represents an interesting opportunity to investigate the reaction of the European Central Bank as a crisis fighting institution and the importance of central bank personalities in policy execution. Accordingly, this paper aims at investigating to what extent the policy-making of the ECB during the crisis has been influenced by Trichet's and Draghi's different personalities. Based on Friedman's hypothesis that "accidents of personality" have a great impact on the functioning of a rulebased institution, we find that the clear differences in policy-making between Trichet and Draghi can be explained by specific features of their respective personalities. Institutions matter, but so do personalities.

Keywords: European Central Bank; Central Bankers; Personality Theory; European Sovereign Debt Crisis; Monetary Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E5 E6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ipewps:382014

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