Making sense of dissents: a history of FOMC dissents

Daniel Thornton and David Wheelock

Review, 2014, vol. 96, issue 3, 213-227

Abstract: This article presents a record of dissents on Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy votes from the Committee?s inception in its modern form in 1936 through 2013. Dissents were rare during the Committee?s first 20 years but began to increase in the late 1950s. The number of dissents increased sharply during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when both inflation and unemployment were unusually high. However, at other times, the number of dissents was not correlated with either inflation or the unemployment rate. A review of FOMC records and published statements indicates that dissents often reflect fundamental disagreement about (i) how to achieve the Committee?s macroeconomic objectives and (ii) the current stance of policy. The number of dissents also appears to have been influenced by the language used by the FOMC to communicate instructions to the manager of the System Open Market Account.

JEL-codes: E61 E65 N12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publicat ... 2014/q3/thornton.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publicat ... ents_infographic.pdf Additional resource: This infographic conveys facts and concepts surrounding the history of FOMC dissents (application/pdf)
https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publicat ... eelock_Dissents.xlsx Data Appendix (application/vnd.ms-excel)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlrv:00025

Access Statistics for this article

Review is currently edited by Juan M. Sanchez

More articles in Review from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis ().