IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkwp/1377.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary policy committee size and inflation volatility

Author

Listed:
  • Erhart, Szilárd
  • Lehment, Harmen
  • Vasquez-Paz, Jose Luis

Abstract

Previous research on the optimal size of a monetary policy committee (MPC) focused on theoretical analyses and experimental studies. These studies suggest that the ideal monetary policy committee may not have many more than five members. In this paper we conduct an empirical cross-country study to explore whether there is a link between the size of an MPC and inflation volatility. The analysis for 75 countries which have adopted MPCs provides some support for the above suggestion: countries with less than five MPC members tend to have larger deviations from trend inflation than MPCs with five members; raising the number of MPC members above five does not contribute to a further reduction in volatility.

Suggested Citation

  • Erhart, Szilárd & Lehment, Harmen & Vasquez-Paz, Jose Luis, 2007. "Monetary policy committee size and inflation volatility," Kiel Working Papers 1377, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1377
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/4070/1/kap1377.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Logue, Dennis E & Willett, Thomas D, 1976. "A Note on the Relation between the Rate and Variability of Inflation," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 43(17), pages 151-158, May.
    2. Anne Sibert, 2006. "Central Banking by Committee," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 145-168, August.
    3. Alan S. Blinder & John Morgan, 2008. "Leadership in Groups: A Monetary Policy Experiment," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 4(4), pages 117-150, December.
    4. Helge Berger, 2006. "Optimal central bank design: Benchmarks for the ECB," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 207-235, September.
    5. Ruth Judson & Athanasios Orphanides, 1999. "Inflation, Volatility and Growth," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 117-138, April.
    6. Clare Lombardelli & James Proudman & James Talbot, 2005. "Committees Versus Individuals: An Experimental Analysis of Monetary Policy Decision-Making," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    7. Berger, Helge & Nitsch, Volker & Lybek, Tonny, 2008. "Central bank boards around the world: Why does membership size differ?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 817-832, December.
    8. Taylor, John B., 1981. "On the relation between the variability of inflation and the average inflation rate," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 57-85, January.
    9. Anonymous, 1955. "International Monetary Fund," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 172-174, February.
    10. Judson, Ruth & Orphanides, Athanasios, 1999. "Inflation, Volatility and Growth," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 117-138, April.
    11. Levi, Maurice D & Makin, John H, 1980. "Inflation Uncertainty and the Phillips Curve: Some Empirical Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 1022-1027, December.
    12. Erhart, Szilárd & Vasquez-Paz, Jose Luis, 2007. "Optimal monetary policy committee size: theory and cross country evidence," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 439, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    13. Backé, Peter, 2004. "Fiscal policy and inflation volatility," Working Paper Series 317, European Central Bank.
    14. Ari Aisen & Francisco Veiga, 2008. "Political instability and inflation volatility," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 207-223, June.
    15. Arthur M. Okun, 1971. "The Mirage of Steady Inflation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 2(2), pages 485-498.
    16. Anonymous, 1955. "International Monetary Fund," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 277-278, May.
    17. Devereux, Michael, 1989. "A Positive Theory of Inflation and Inflation Variance," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 27(1), pages 105-116, January.
    18. Mr. M. F. Bleaney, 1999. "The Disappearing Openness-Inflation Relationship: A Cross-Country Analysis of Inflation Rates," IMF Working Papers 1999/161, International Monetary Fund.
    19. Friedman, Milton, 1977. "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 451-472, June.
    20. Blinder, Alan S & Morgan, John, 2005. "Are Two Heads Better than One? Monetary Policy by Committee," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 789-811, October.
    21. Anonymous, 1955. "International Monetary Fund," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 431-432, August.
    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. Charléty, Patricia & Romelli, Davide & Santacreu-Vasut, Estefania, 2017. "Appointments to central bank boards: Does gender matter?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 59-61.
    2. Ekor, Maxwell & Saka, Jimoh & Adeniyi, Oluwatosin, 2014. "Monetary Policy Committee and Monetary Policy Conduct in Nigeria: A Preliminary Investigation," MPRA Paper 60770, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2014.
    3. Helge Berger & Volker Nitsch, 2011. "Too Many Cooks? Committees in Monetary Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 78(2), pages 452-475, October.
    4. Christoph S. Weber, 2018. "Central bank transparency and inflation (volatility) – new evidence," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 21-67, January.
    5. Esteban Colla De Robertis, 2010. "Monetary Committee Size and Special Interest Influence," Documentos de Investigación - Research Papers 2, CEMLA.
    6. Szilárd Erhart & Jose Luis Vasquez-Paz, 2008. "Determinants of the size of a monetary policy committee: Theory and cross country evidence," Working Papers 2008-001, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.

    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. Helge Berger & Volker Nitsch, 2011. "Too Many Cooks? Committees in Monetary Policy," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 78(2), pages 452-475, October.
    2. Erhart, Szilárd & Vasquez-Paz, Jose Luis, 2007. "Optimal monetary policy committee size: theory and cross country evidence," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 439, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Berger, Helge & Nitsch, Volker & Lybek, Tonny, 2008. "Central bank boards around the world: Why does membership size differ?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 817-832, December.
    4. Alan S. Blinder, 2009. "Making Monetary Policy by Committee," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(2), pages 171-194, August.
    5. Mikael Apel & Carl Andreas Claussen & Petra Gerlach-Kristen & Petra Lennartsdotter & Øistein Røisland, 2013. "Monetary policy decisions – comparing theory and “inside” information from MPC members," Working Paper 2013/03, Norges Bank.
    6. Alan S. Blinder, 2007. "On the Design of Monetary Policy Committees," Working Papers 1030, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    7. repec:pri:cepsud:167blinder is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Alan S. Blinder, 2007. "On the Design of Monetary Policy Committees," Working Papers 1030, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    9. Dimitrios Varvarigos, 2007. "Volatile public spending in a model of money and sustainable growth," Discussion Paper Series 2007_18, Department of Economics, Loughborough University, revised Jul 2007.
    10. repec:pri:cepsud:153blinder is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Alan S. Blinder, 2009. "Making Monetary Policy by Committee," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(2), pages 171-194, August.
    12. Garriga, Ana Carolina & Rodriguez, Cesar M., 2023. "Central bank independence and inflation volatility in developing countries," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 1320-1341.
    13. Garcia, Rene & Perron, Pierre, 1996. "An Analysis of the Real Interest Rate under Regime Shifts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 111-125, February.
    14. Alan S. Blinder & John Morgan, 2008. "Leadership in Groups: A Monetary Policy Experiment," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 4(4), pages 117-150, December.
    15. Szilárd Erhart & Jose Luis Vasquez-Paz, 2008. "Determinants of the size of a monetary policy committee: Theory and cross country evidence," Working Papers 2008-001, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.
    16. Baillie, R. & Chung, C. & Tieslau, M., 1992. "The Long Memory and Variability of Inflation : A Reappraisal of the Friedman Hypothesis," Other publications TiSEM 49a709f4-608f-43c5-840b-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Don Bredin & Stilianos Fountas, 2005. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty And Macroeconomic Performance: Are They Related?," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 73(s1), pages 58-76, September.
    18. Tsyplakov Alexander, 2010. "The links between inflation and inflation uncertainty at the longer horizon," EERC Working Paper Series 10/09e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    19. Agnès Bénassy‐Quéré & Edouard Turkisch, 2009. "The ECB Governing Council in an Enlarged Euro Area," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 25-53, January.
    20. Wilson, Bradley Kemp, 2006. "The links between inflation, inflation uncertainty and output growth: New time series evidence from Japan," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 609-620, September.
    21. Chi-Wei Su & Hui Yu & Hsu-Ling Chang & Xiao-Lin Li, 2017. "How does inflation determine inflation uncertainty? A Chinese perspective," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 1417-1434, May.
    22. Harald Badinger, 2006. "Fiscal shocks, output dynamics and macroeconomic stability: an empirical assessment for Austria (1983–2002)," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 33(5), pages 267-284, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation Volatility; Monetary Policy Committee;

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • 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:zbw:ifwkwp:1377. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.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.