IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bis/biswps/1304.html

The life experience of central bankers and monetary policy decisions: a cross-country dataset

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Madeira

Abstract

Using hand-collected data with biographical information on central bank governors and board members in over 200 countries, I obtain experience-based forecasts for GDP growth and inflation based on an adaptive learning model estimated from their lifetime macroeconomic data. I show life experience influences the monetary policy rates, even after accounting for other macroeconomics observables in the empirical Taylor rule. The role of personal experience is lower in advanced economies and for central bankers with treasury experience. Furthermore, life experience influences the tone of speeches for monetary policy, financial stability and climate concerns. Weather disasters experience reduces climate concerns and NGFS membership.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Madeira, 2025. "The life experience of central bankers and monetary policy decisions: a cross-country dataset," BIS Working Papers 1304, Bank for International Settlements.
    • Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:1304
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1304.pdf
    File Function: Full PDF document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bis.org/publ/work1304.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert C. Feenstra & Robert Inklaar & Marcel P. Timmer, 2015. "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3150-3182, October.
    2. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    3. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Yueran Ma & Andrei Shleifer, 2020. "Overreaction in Macroeconomic Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2748-2782, September.
    4. Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher, 2007. "Communication by Central Bank Committee Members: Different Strategies, Same Effectiveness?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(2‐3), pages 509-541, March.
    5. Wouter Bossu & Arthur D. P. Rossi, 2019. "The Role of Board Oversight in Central Bank Governance: Key Legal Design Issues," IMF Working Papers 2019/293, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Campiglio, Emanuele & Deyris, Jérôme & Romelli, Davide & Scalisi, Ginevra, 2025. "Warning words in a warming world: Central bank communication and climate change," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    7. Ran Abramitzky & Leah Boustan & Katherine Eriksson & James Feigenbaum & Santiago Pérez, 2021. "Automated Linking of Historical Data," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 865-918, September.
    8. Emanuele Campiglio & Jérôme Deyris & Davide Romelli & Ginevra Scalisi, 2025. "Warning words in a warming world: central bank communication and climate change," Working Papers hal-04978072, HAL.
    9. Dreher, Axel & Sturm, Jan-Egbert & Haan, Jakob de, 2010. "When is a central bank governor replaced? Evidence based on a new data set," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 766-781, September.
    10. Gennaro Bernile & Vineet Bhagwat & P. Raghavendra Rau, 2017. "What Doesn't Kill You Will Only Make You More Risk-Loving: Early-Life Disasters and CEO Behavior," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 167-206, February.
    11. Mikael Apel & Marianna Blix Grimaldi & Isaiah Hull, 2022. "How Much Information Do Monetary Policy Committees Disclose? Evidence from the FOMC's Minutes and Transcripts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(5), pages 1459-1490, August.
    12. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2018. "Diagnostic Expectations and Credit Cycles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(1), pages 199-227, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. D. Masciandaro, 2019. "What Bird Is That? Central Banking And Monetary Policy In The Last Forty Years," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 19127, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    2. Gáti, Laura, 2023. "Monetary policy & anchored expectations—An endogenous gain learning model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(S), pages 37-47.
    3. Chen, Heng & Li, Xu & Pei, Guangyu & Xin, Qian, 2024. "Heterogeneous overreaction in expectation formation: Evidence and theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    4. Christopher S. Sutherland, 2020. "Forward Guidance and Expectation Formation: A Narrative Approach," Staff Working Papers 20-40, Bank of Canada.
    5. Jonathan J Adams, 2024. "Optimal Policy Without Rational Expectations: A Sufficient Statistic Solution," Working Papers 001011, University of Florida, Department of Economics.
    6. Jean-Paul L’Huillier & Sanjay R Singh & Donghoon Yoo, 2024. "Incorporating Diagnostic Expectations into the New Keynesian Framework," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(5), pages 3013-3046.
    7. James Cloyne & Òscar Jordà & Sanjay R. Singh & Alan M. Taylor, 2025. "Asset Prices and Credit with Diagnostic Expectations," Working Paper Series 2025-15, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    8. Rubén Fernández-Fuertes, 2025. "Monetary Policy Shocks: A New Hope. Large Language Models and Central Bank Communication," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 25257, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    9. Fontanier, Paul, 2025. "Optimal policy for behavioral financial crises," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    10. Niemann, Stefan & Prein, Timm, 2024. "Sovereign Risk under Diagnostic Expectations," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302386, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Etienne Farvaque & Norimichi Matsueda, 2017. "Optimal Term Length For An Overconfident Central Banker," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 62(01), pages 179-192, March.
    12. Francesco D’Acunto & Daniel Hoang & Maritta Paloviita & Michael Weber, 2023. "IQ, Expectations, and Choice," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(5), pages 2292-2325.
    13. Pablo Pastory y Camarasa & Martien Lamers, 2023. "Do Actions Follow Words? How bank sentiment predicts credit growth," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 23/1073, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    14. Carolin Pflueger & Emil Siriwardane & Adi Sunderam, 2019. "Financial Market Risk Perceptions and the Macroeconomy," NBER Working Papers 26290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Helder Ferreira de Mendonça & Ivando Faria, 2015. "Brazilian Central Bank communication and interest rate expectations," Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1-2), pages 25-44, July.
    16. Hagenhoff, Tim & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2023. "The role of stickiness, extrapolation and past consensus forecasts in macroeconomic expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    17. Maenhout, Pascal J. & Vedolin, Andrea & Xing, Hao, 2025. "Robustness and dynamic sentiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    18. Xiao, Wei, 2022. "Understanding probabilistic expectations – a behavioral approach," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    19. Prati, Alberto & Saucet, Charlotte, 2024. "The causal effect of a health treatment on beliefs, stated preferences and memories," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • E70 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bis:biswps:1304. 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: Martin Fessler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bisssch.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.