IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20030053.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Committee Structure and its Implications for Monetary Policy Decision-making

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Marc Berk

    (De Nederlandsche Bank, and FEWEB, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  • Beata K. Bierut

    (Faculty of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Abstract

We investigate the implications for the setting of interest rateswhen monetary policy decisions are taken by a committee, in whicha subset of members may meet prior to the voting in the committeeand therefore has the possibility to reach consensus ex ante to voteunanimously ex post. We allow for different committee sizes, variousvoting rules and differences in skills among committee members. Wefind that the size of the committee is much less important in deter-mining the degree of interest rate inertia than the skills of committeemembers. Moreover, prior interaction of a subgroup only has a minoreffect on the setting of interest rates by the committee, provided thatmembers on average are equally skilled and voting takes place using asimple majority rule. If either of those assumptions are relaxed, priorinteraction has substantial effects on the setting of interest rates. Inaddition, prior interaction increases the optimal size of the Committee,ceteris paribus.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Marc Berk & Beata K. Bierut, 2003. "Committee Structure and its Implications for Monetary Policy Decision-making," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-053/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20030053
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/03053.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Belden, Susan, 1989. "Policy Preferences of FOMC Members as Revealed by Dissenting Votes," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 21(4), pages 432-441, November.
    2. Ellen E. Meade & Nathan Sheets, 2002. "Regional influences on U.S. monetary policy: some implications for Europe," International Finance Discussion Papers 721, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    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. Montoro, Carlos, 2007. "Monetary policy committees and interest rate smoothing," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19752, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Vidal, Jean-Pierre & Maurin, Vincent, 2012. "Monetary policy deliberations: committee size and voting rules," Working Paper Series 1434, European Central Bank.
    3. Jan Marc Berk & Beata K. Bierut, 2004. "The Effects of Learning in Interactive Monetary Policy Committees," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 04-029/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Piotr Stanek, 2004. "How to assess proposals for enlargement reform of the European Central Bank," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 91(5), pages 209-239.

    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. Alexander Jung & Francesco Paolo Mongelli & Philippe Moutot, 2010. "How are the Eurosystem's Monetary Policy Decisions Prepared? A Roadmap," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 319-345, March.
    2. Jan Marc Berk & Beata K. Bierut, 2005. "On the Optimality of Decisions made by Hub-and-Spokes Monetary Policy Committees," DNB Working Papers 027, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    3. Jan Marc Berk & Beata Bierut, 2004. "On the Optimality of Decisions," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 04-120/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Berk, J.M. & Bierut, B.K., 2003. "Committee structure and its implications for monetary policy decision-making," Serie Research Memoranda 0006, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.
    5. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:48:y:2010:i::p:319-345 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Simona Fabrizi & Steffen Lippert & Addison Pan & Matthew Ryan, 2022. "A theory of unanimous jury voting with an ambiguous likelihood," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 399-425, October.
    7. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    8. Meirowitz, Adam, 2005. "Deliberative Democracy or Market Democracy: Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Papers 03-28-2005, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    9. Gabrielle Demange, 2018. "New electoral systems and old referendums," PSE Working Papers hal-01852206, HAL.
    10. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    11. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    12. Fifić, Mario & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2014. "Are two interviewers better than one?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(8), pages 1771-1779.
    13. Battaglini, Marco, 2005. "Sequential voting with abstention," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 445-463, May.
    14. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    15. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Shmuel Nitzan, 2017. "Is diversity in capabilities desirable when adding decision makers?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 82(3), pages 395-402, March.
    16. Schaefer, Alexander, 2021. "Rationality, uncertainty, and unanimity: an epistemic critique of contractarianism," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(1), pages 82-117, March.
    17. Gordon Rausser & Leo Simon & Jinhua Zhao, 2015. "Rational exaggeration and counter-exaggeration in information aggregation games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(1), pages 109-146, May.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3mgbd73vkp9f9oje7utooe7vpg is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Berk, Jan Marc & Bierut, Beata K., 2011. "Communication in a monetary policy committee," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 791-801.
    20. Hamza Bennani, 2012. "National influences inside the ECB: an assessment from central bankers' statements," Working Papers hal-00992646, HAL.
    21. Ginzburg, Boris, 2017. "Sincere voting in an electorate with heterogeneous preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 120-123.
    22. Taiga Tsubota & Masahide Horita, 2022. "What Forms the Trajectory of Social Reforms? The Roles of Decision Rules and Communication under Epistemic Uncertainty," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 187-212, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    monetary policy; interest rates; voting.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    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:tin:wpaper:20030053. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    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.