Federal Reserve Structure, Economic Ideas, and Monetary and Financial Policy

Michael Bordo and Edward Prescott

No 19-13, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Abstract: The decentralized structure of the Federal Reserve System is evaluated as a mechanism for generating and processing new ideas on monetary and financial policy. The role of the Reserve Banks starting in the 1960s is emphasized. The introduction of monetarism in the 1960s, rational expectations in the 1970s, credibility in the 1980s, transparency, and other monetary policy ideas by Reserve Banks into the Federal Reserve System is documented. Contributions by Reserve Banks to policy on bank structure, bank regulation, and lender of last resort are also discussed. We argue that the Reserve Banks were willing to support and develop new ideas due to internal reforms to the FOMC that Chairman William McChesney Martin implemented in the 1950s. Furthermore, the Reserve Banks were able to succeed at this because of their private-public governance structure, a structure set up in 1913 for a highly decentralized Federal Reserve System, but which survived the centralization of the System in the Banking Act of 1935. We argue that this role of the Reserve Banks is an important benefit of the Federal Reserve?s decentralized structure and contributes to better policy by allowing for more competition in ideas and reducing groupthink.

Keywords: financial regulations; monetary policy; governance; Federal Reserve System (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B0 E58 G28 H1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2019-06-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Federal Reserve Structure, Economic Ideas, and Monetary and Financial Policy (2019)
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DOI: 10.26509/frbc-wp-201913

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