BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Central banking by committee

    Sibert, Anne (2006) Central banking by committee. International Finance 9 (2), pp. 145-168. ISSN 1367-0271.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    A small economics literature on monetary policy making by committee is complemented by the literature on groups in the other social sciences. I review some of this work, focusing on the effect of size on group performance and whether committees are more moderate than individuals. Studies document that an individual's effort decreases with group size unless their contributions can be identified and evaluated and that committee membership is polarizing, tending to make committees more extreme. A particularly harmful form of group polarization occurs when a striving for consensus causes members to stop paying sufficient attention to alternative actions. The literature suggests that monetary policy committees should have a clear objective, publish individual votes and not have many more than five members. They should be structured so that members do not act as part of a group, perhaps by having short terms in office and members from outside the central bank. External scrutiny of the decision-making process should be encouraged.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 15 Aug 2013 09:28
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:06
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/8009

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    273Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item