The Central Bank Governor and Interest Rate Setting by Committee

Emile van Ommeren*, Giulia Piccillo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This article studies the role of central bank governors in monetary policy decisions taken by a committee. To carry out this analysis, we constructed a novel dataset of committee voting behaviour for six OECD countries for up to three decades. Using a range of Taylor rule specifications, we show that a change in governor significantly affects interest rate setting. We also observe systematic differences in interest rate rules based on the political party appointing the governor, with more inflation-averse policies under governors that are appointed by a right-wing political authority. We show the robustness of this result by using a wider dataset (including over 3000 observations from 12 countries).
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)155-185
Number of pages31
JournalCesifo Economic Studies
Volume67
Issue number2
Early online date6 Dec 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2021

JEL classifications

  • e50 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit: General
  • e02 - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
  • p16 - Capitalist Systems: Political Economy

Keywords

  • Taylor rule
  • central bank governors
  • monetary policy
  • IDEOLOGY
  • MARKETS
  • POWER
  • GENERALIZED-METHOD
  • MONETARY-POLICY COMMITTEES
  • CHAIRMAN
  • INDEPENDENCE
  • ESTIMATORS
  • TIME-SERIES
  • RULES

Cite this