IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v74y2022ics0176268022000258.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The accountability gap: Deliberation on monetary policy in Britain and America during the financial crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl
  • Dann, Christopher
  • Chapman, Jacob

Abstract

We employ multiple methods to gauge empirically the quality of the deliberative process whereby central bankers are held to account for their policy decisions. We use quantitative text analysis on the monetary policy legislative oversight hearing transcripts in the UK and US during the financial crisis. We find that the UK performs significantly better than the US in holding the central bank head to account on monetary policy, namely by engaging in a reciprocal dialogue between the legislative committee and the central banker. We then manually code selected exchanges from these transcripts, according to four criteria of deliberation: partisanship, accountability, narrative and response quality. We find that British MPs invoke almost no partisan rhetoric and target their questions more to relevant aspects of monetary policy; by comparison, their American counterparts seek to appeal more to their constituents and tend to veer away from discussing the details of monetary policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl & Dann, Christopher & Chapman, Jacob, 2022. "The accountability gap: Deliberation on monetary policy in Britain and America during the financial crisis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:74:y:2022:i:c:s0176268022000258
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2022.102209
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268022000258
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2022.102209?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alesina, Alberto & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1988. "Political Parties and the Business Cycle in the United States, 1948-1984," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(1), pages 63-82, February.
    2. Hibbs, Douglas A., 1977. "Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(4), pages 1467-1487, December.
    3. Marc Anderes & Alexander Rathke & Sina Streicher & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2021. "The role of ECB communication in guiding markets," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 186(3), pages 351-383, March.
    4. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Geraats, Petra M., 2006. "How transparent are central banks?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-21, March.
    5. Chang,Kelly H., 2003. "Appointing Central Bankers," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521823333.
    6. Lanny W. Martin & Georg Vanberg, 2020. "Coalition Government, Legislative Institutions, and Public Policy in Parliamentary Democracies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(2), pages 325-340, April.
    7. Ehrmann, Michael & Fratzscher, Marcel, 2007. "The timing of central bank communication," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 124-145, March.
    8. Albert Weale & Aude Bicquelet & Judith Bara, 2012. "Debating Abortion, Deliberative Reciprocity and Parliamentary Advocacy," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 60(3), pages 643-667, October.
    9. Masciandaro, Donato & Quintyn, Marc & Taylor, Michael W., 2008. "Inside and outside the central bank: Independence and accountability in financial supervision: Trends and determinants," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 833-848, December.
    10. André Bächtiger & Dominik Hangartner, 2010. "When Deliberative Theory Meets Empirical Political Science: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Political Deliberation," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 58, pages 609-629, October.
    11. Helge Berger & Jakob de Haan & Jan‐Egbert Sturm, 2011. "Does money matter in the ECB strategy? New evidence based on ECB communication," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(1), pages 16-31, January.
    12. Sanders, James & Lisi, Giulio & Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl, 2018. "Themes and topics in parliamentary oversight hearings: a new direction in textual data analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87624, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Klüver, Heike & Mahoney, Christine, 2015. "Measuring interest group framing strategies in public policy debates," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(2), pages 223-244, August.
    14. Margaret E. Roberts & Brandon M. Stewart & Dustin Tingley & Christopher Lucas & Jetson Leder‐Luis & Shana Kushner Gadarian & Bethany Albertson & David G. Rand, 2014. "Structural Topic Models for Open‐Ended Survey Responses," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(4), pages 1064-1082, October.
    15. Rozkrut, Marek & Rybinski, Krzysztof & Sztaba, Lucyna & Szwaja, Radoslaw, 2007. "Quest for central bank communication: Does it pay to be "talkative"?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 176-206, March.
    16. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    17. Ali Mahmoodi & Bahador Bahrami & Carsten Mehring, 2018. "Reciprocity of social influence," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-9, December.
    18. Masciandaro, Donato & Romelli, Davide, 2018. "Central bankers as supervisors: Do crises matter?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 120-140.
    19. André Bächtiger & Dominik Hangartner, 2010. "When Deliberative Theory Meets Empirical Political Science: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Political Deliberation," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 58(4), pages 609-629, October.
    20. Barabas, Jason, 2004. "How Deliberation Affects Policy Opinions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(4), pages 687-701, 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. Koop, Christel & Scotto di Vettimo, Michele, 2023. "How do the media scrutinise central banking? Evidence from the Bank of England," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Bohl, Martin T. & Kanelis, Dimitrios & Siklos, Pierre L., 2023. "Central bank mandates: How differences can influence the content and tone of central bank communication," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).

    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. Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl & Dann, Christopher & Chapman, Jacob, 2022. "The accountability gap: deliberation on monetary policy in Britain and America during the financial crisis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114364, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Ferrara, Federico M. & Masciandaro, Donato & Moschella, Manuela & Romelli, Davide, 2022. "Political voice on monetary policy: Evidence from the parliamentary hearings of the European Central Bank," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    3. Rieder, Kilian, 2022. "Monetary policy decision-making by committee: Why, when and how it can work," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. Sanders, James & Lisi, Giulio & Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl, 2018. "Themes and topics in parliamentary oversight hearings: a new direction in textual data analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87624, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Vítor Castro & Rodrigo Martins, 2015. "Budget, expenditures composition and political manipulation: Evidence from Portugal," NIPE Working Papers 4/2015, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    6. 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.
    7. Mauricio Cárdenas Santa María & Zeinab Partow, 1998. "Oil, coffee and the dynamic commons problems in Colombia," Working Papers Series. Documentos de Trabajo 9206, Fedesarrollo.
    8. Jablanovic, Vesna D., 2013. "The Government Spending On Agribusiness Sector Model," 50th Anniversary Seminar, Agriculture and Rural Development -Challenges of Transition and Integration Processes, September 27, 2013 161816, University of Belgrade, Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture.
    9. V�tor Castro & Rodrigo Martins, 2016. "Are there political cycles hidden inside government expenditures?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 34-37, January.
    10. Masciandaro, Donato & Romelli, Davide, 2015. "Ups and downs of central bank independence from the Great Inflation to the Great Recession: theory, institutions and empirics," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 259-289, December.
    11. Marco E. Terrones, 1991. "Macroeconomic policy and elections: Theories and challenges," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 6(2), pages 173-195.
    12. Castro, Vítor & Martins, Rodrigo, 2018. "Politically driven cycles in fiscal policy: In depth analysis of the functional components of government expenditures," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 44-64.
    13. Ľuboš Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2020. "Political Cycles and Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(11), pages 4011-4045.
    14. Cour-Thimann, Philippine & Jung, Alexander, 2021. "Interest-rate setting and communication at the ECB in its first twenty years," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    15. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Jakob De Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2008. "Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 910-945, December.
    16. Gabriel Caldas Montes & Rodolfo Tomás da Fonseca Nicolay, 2015. "Central bank’s perception on inflation and inflation expectations of experts," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 42(6), pages 1142-1158, November.
    17. Rebecca Hellerstein, 2007. "Is There a Dead Spot? New Evidence on FOMC Decisions Before Elections," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(6), pages 1411-1427, September.
    18. Jerôme, Bruno & Jerôme-Speziari, Véronique, 2010. "Forecasting partisan dynamics in Europe," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 98-115, January.
    19. Isadora Sánchez-Torné & Macarena Pérez-Suárez & Juan Carlos Morán-Álvarez, 2020. "Una comparativa de la innovación de Espana y Rusia: ¿políticas bilaterales para la innovación?," Revista Finanzas y Politica Economica, Universidad Católica de Colombia, vol. 12(1), pages 201-233, June.
    20. Rodolfo Tomás Da Fonseca Nicolay & Gabriel Caldas Montes, 2014. "Comunicação Do Banco Central,Expectativas De Inflação E Profecia Auto-Realizável: Evidências Para Obrasil," Anais do XL Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 40th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 046, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].

    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:eee:poleco:v:74:y:2022:i:c:s0176268022000258. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    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.