IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vua/wpaper/2003-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Committee structure and its implications for monetary policy decision-making

Author

Listed:
  • Berk, J.M.

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Econometrie (Free University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics Sciences, Business Administration and Economitrics)

  • Bierut, B.K.

Abstract

We investigate the implications for the setting of interest rates when monetary policy decisions are taken by a committee, in which a subset of members may meet prior to the voting in the committee and therefore has the possibility to reach consensus ex ante to vote unanimously ex post. We allow for different committee sizes, various voting rules and differences in skills among committee members. We find that the size of the committee is much less important in determining the degree of interest rate inertia than the skills of committee members. Moreover, prior interaction of a subgroup only has a minor effect on the setting of interest rates by the committee, provided that members on average are equally skilled and voting takes place using a simple majority rule. If either of these assumptions are relaxed, prior interaction has substantial effects on the setting of interest rates.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:vua:wpaper:2003-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://degree.ubvu.vu.nl/repec/vua/wpaper/pdf/20030006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Ben-Yashar, Ruth C & Nitzan, Shmuel I, 1997. "The Optimal Decision Rule for Fixed-Size Committees in Dichotomous Choice Situations: The General Result," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(1), pages 175-186, February.
    3. 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.
    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. 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.
    2. Jan Marc Berk & Beata Bierut, 2004. "On the Optimality of Decisions," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 04-120/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Eyal Baharad & Jacob Goldberger & Moshe Koppel & Shmuel Nitzan, 2012. "Beyond Condorcet: optimal aggregation rules using voting records," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 72(1), pages 113-130, January.
    4. Jan Marc Berk & Beata K. Bierut, 2005. "Communication in Monetary Policy Committees," DNB Working Papers 059, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    5. Ruth Ben‐Yashar & Miriam Krausz & Shmuel Nitzan, 2018. "Government loan guarantees and the credit decision‐making structure," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 607-625, May.
    6. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Leif Danziger, 2014. "On the optimal composition of committees," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(4), pages 973-980, December.
    7. Hahn, Volker, 2011. "Sequential aggregation of verifiable information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1447-1454.
    8. Franz Dietrich & Kai Spiekermann, 2021. "Social Epistemology," Post-Print halshs-02431971, HAL.
    9. Ben-Yashar, Ruth & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2019. "Skill, value and remuneration in committees," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 93-95.
    10. Ruth Ben-Yashar, 2014. "The generalized homogeneity assumption and the Condorcet jury theorem," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 237-241, August.
    11. Ben-Yashar, Ruth & Danziger, Leif, 2011. "Symmetric and asymmetric committees," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 440-447.
    12. Eyal Baharad & Ruth Ben-Yashar, 2021. "Judgment Aggregation by a Boundedly Rational Decision-Maker," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 903-914, August.
    13. Winston Koh, 2005. "The optimal design of fallible organizations: invariance of optimal decision criterion and uniqueness of hierarchy and polyarchy structures," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 25(1), pages 207-220, October.
    14. Alessandra Arcuri & Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, 2010. "Centralization versus Decentralization as a Risk-Return Trade-Off," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 359-378, May.
    15. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Leif Danziger, 2015. "When is voting optimal?," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 3(2), pages 341-356, October.
    16. Ben-Yashar, Ruth & Khuller, Samir & Kraus, Sarit, 2001. "Optimal collective dichotomous choice under partial order constraints," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 349-364, May.
    17. 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.
    18. Ruth Ben-Yashar, 2006. "Information is important to Condorcet jurors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 305-319, June.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    monetary policy; interest rates;

    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:vua:wpaper:2003-6. 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: R. Dam (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fewvunl.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.