IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v26y1998i6p548-564.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Monetary and Fiscal Constitutions and the Bureaucratic Behavior of the Federal Reserve

Author

Listed:
  • William J. Boyes

    (Arizona State University)

  • William Stewart Mounts JR

    (Mercer University)

  • Clifford Sowell

    (Berea College)

Abstract

A body of literature has developed that models the Federal Reserve as a self- interested bureaucracy, and not simply as an altruistic bureau guided only by a concern with the public interest. This literature focuses on the monetary constitution—the institutional arrangements and relationships under which the Federal Reserve operates. However, the Federal Reserve also operates under a fiscal constitution (the institutional arrangements that guide development of a federal budget). This is because the Federal Reserve is an agent of Congress. Unfortunately, this important principal-agent relationship has not been incorpo rated into the examinations of the bureaucratic behavior of the Federal Reserve. The purpose of this article is to reexamine the Federal Reserve's tendency to engage in expense-preference behavior while controlling for both monetary and fiscal constitutions.

Suggested Citation

  • William J. Boyes & William Stewart Mounts JR & Clifford Sowell, 1998. "Monetary and Fiscal Constitutions and the Bureaucratic Behavior of the Federal Reserve," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(6), pages 548-564, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:26:y:1998:i:6:p:548-564
    DOI: 10.1177/109114219802600602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114219802600602
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114219802600602?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shughart, William F, II & Tollison, Robert D, 1983. "Preliminary Evidence on the Use of Inputs by the Federal Reserve System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 291-304, June.
    2. Hannan, Timothy H, 1979. "Expense-Preference Behavior in Banking: A Reexamination," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(4), pages 891-895, August.
    3. Strong, John S, 1984. "The Use of Inputs by the Federal Reserve System: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 1118-1120, December.
    4. Friedman, Milton, 1982. "Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 14(1), pages 98-118, February.
    5. Varian, Hal R., 1990. "Goodness-of-fit in optimizing models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1-2), pages 125-140.
    6. Boyes, William J & Mounts, William Stewart & Sowell, Clifford, 1988. "The Federal Reserve as a Bureaucracy: An Examination of Expense-Preference Behavior," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(2), pages 181-190, May.
    7. Timothy H. Hannan & Ferdinand Mavinga, 1980. "Expense Preference and Managerial Control: the Case of the Banking Firm," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(2), pages 671-682, Autumn.
    8. Friedman, Milton, 1982. "Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice: A Reply," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 14(3), pages 404-406, August.
    9. Toma, Mark, 1982. "Inflationary bias of the Federal Reserve System : A bureaucratic perspective," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 163-190.
    10. Edwards, Franklin R, 1977. "Managerial Objectives in Regulated Industries: Expense-Preference Behavior in Banking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 147-162, February.
    11. Boyd, John H, 1984. "The Use of Inputs by the Federal Reserve System: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 1114-1117, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mixon, Franklin Jr. & Upadhyaya, Kamal P., 2004. "Examining legislative challenges to central bank autonomy: macroeconomic and agency costs models," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 415-428.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stuart Allen & Donald McCrickard & Phillip Cartwright & Charles Delorme, 1988. "The use of inputs by the Federal Reserve System: An extended model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 205-214, December.
    2. Loretta J. Mester, 2003. "Applying efficiency measurement techniques to central banks," Working Papers 03-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    3. Alexander W. Salter & William J. Luther, 2019. "Adaptation and central banking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 180(3), pages 243-256, September.
    4. Caporale, Tony & Grier, Kevin B, 1998. "A Political Model of Monetary Policy with Application to the Real Fed Funds Rate," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 409-428, October.
    5. Gary Anderson & William Shughart & Robert Tollison, 1988. "A public choice theory of the great contraction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 3-23, October.
    6. Jordan, Jerry L. & Luther, William J., 2022. "Central bank independence and the Federal Reserve's new operating regime," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 510-515.
    7. Gropper, Daniel M. & Hudson, Carl D., 2003. "A note on savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference: A re-examination," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(10), pages 2003-2014, October.
    8. Neil Murphy & Dan Salandro, 1997. "Form of ownership and risk taking in banking: Some evidence from Massachusetts savings banks," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 21(3), pages 19-28, September.
    9. Salter, Alexander W. & Smith, Daniel J., 2019. "Political economists or political economists? The role of political environments in the formation of fed policy under burns, Greenspan, and Bernanke," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 1-13.
    10. Robert D. Auerbach, 1991. "Institutional Preservation At The Federal Reserve," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 9(3), pages 46-58, July.
    11. Sirajo Aliyu & Rosylin Mohd Yusof, 2016. "Profitability and Cost Efficiency of Islamic Banks: A Panel Analysis of Some Selected Countries," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 6(4), pages 1736-1743.
    12. Tudor, Kerry William, 1985. "The impact of management ability and market structure on the performance of agricultural banks in Iowa," ISU General Staff Papers 198501010800009749, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    13. Mixon, Franklin Jr. & Upadhyaya, Kamal P., 2004. "Examining legislative challenges to central bank autonomy: macroeconomic and agency costs models," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 415-428.
    14. Hasan, Iftekhar & Lozano-Vivas, Ana, 2002. "Organizational Form and Expense Preference: Spanish Experience," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 135-150, April.
    15. Boyes, William J. & Mounts, WM. Jr. & Sowell, Clifford & Payne, James E., 1996. "All politics is local: The effect of fiscal and monetary constitutions on economic policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 657-678.
    16. Purroy, Pedro & Salas, Vicente, 2000. "Strategic competition in retail banking under expense preference behavior," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 809-824, May.
    17. Jonathan Benchimol & André Fourçans, 2016. "Nominal income versus Taylor-type rules in practice," Working Papers hal-01357870, HAL.
    18. Wm. Mounts & Clifford Sowell & James Lindley, 1985. "Rent-seeking over time: The continuity of capture," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 87-94, January.
    19. Gabriel Jiménez & Jesús Saurina, 2006. "Credit Cycles, Credit Risk, and Prudential Regulation," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(2), May.
    20. Păun Cristian, 2010. "Banii, băncile centrale, politica monetară şi reglementarea sistemului bancar modern," Revista OEconomica, Romanian Society for Economic Science, Revista OEconomica, issue 02, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:26:y:1998:i:6:p:548-564. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.