Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/83407 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IES Working Paper No. 37/2011
Publisher: 
Charles University in Prague, Institute of Economic Studies (IES), Prague
Abstract: 
We assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy. First, we specify a theoretical model of central bank board decision-making and simulate the voting outcomes. Three different versions of model are estimated with simulated data: 1) democratic, 2) consensual and 3) opportunistic. These versions differ in the degree of informational influence between the chairman and other board members influence prior to the voting. The model shows that the voting pattern is informative about future monetary policy provided that the signals about the optimal policy rate are noisy and that there is sufficient independence in voting across the board members, which is in line with the democratic version. Next, the model predictions are tested on real data on five inflation targeting countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom). Subject to various sensitivity tests, it is found that the democratic version of the model corresponds best to the real data and that in all countries the voting records are informative about future monetary policy, making a case for publishing the records.
Subjects: 
monetary policy
voting record
transparency
collective decisionmaking
JEL: 
C78
D78
E52
E58
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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