This article studies the role of central bank governors in monetary policy decisions taken by a committee. To carry out this analysis, we constructed a novel dataset of committee voting behaviour for six OECD countries for up to three decades. Using a range of Taylor rule specifications, we show that a change in governor significantly affects interest rate setting. We also observe systematic differences in interest rate rules based on the political party appointing the governor, with more inflation-averse policies under governors that are appointed by a right-wing political authority. We show the robustness of this result by using a wider dataset (including over 3000 observations from 12 countries). (JEL codes: E02, E5, P16)

The global trading regime is characterized by the co‐existence of bilateral and multilateral politics. In this article, we offer a political economy explanation for this regime complex, by tracing public actors’ institutional choices back to political incentives for economic sectors and the firms active within them. First, we argue that product differentiation creates mixed motives on the part of firms, which in turn leads to a preference for the segmentation of markets, and thus bilateralism. Second, we contend that among these firms, multinational corporations (MNCs) are particularly well‐positioned to exert influence over policy decisions in multiple international fora, both bilateral and multilateral. This provides incentives for multinationals to push governments to create and sustain regime complexes in the form of nested regimes. We show how these expectations are largely born out in an empirical test for six different economic sectors.

The European Commission keeps track of foreign trade barriers through its Market Access Strategy. In this study, we examine some of the key political-economic conditions under which the European Union decides whether and how to address these trade issues. Drawing on an original dataset of (allegedly) illegal foreign trade barriers faced by European Union businesses, we show that industries dominated by a few large companies are more successful in gaining the support of the Commission to challenge these foreign trade barriers. Moreover, we find that the European Commission’s strategy depends on the economic power relationship with the trading partner: the European Union privileges negotiations when seeking to enforce international trade rules against economically weaker states, while it prefers to use litigation against stronger trading partners.

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This paper examines the role of central bank governors in monetary policy decisions taken by a committee. To carry out this analysis, we constructed a novel dataset of committee voting behaviour for six OECD countries for up to three decades. Using a range of Taylor-rule specifications, we show that a change in governor significantly affects the interest rate setting of the whole committee. We also observe systematic differences in the responsiveness to recent changes in the state of the economy based on the political party appointing the governor, with higher responsiveness under governors that are appointed by a left-wing political authority. In contrast, right wing appointed governors are more likely to consider expected economic developments in the future when deciding on the appropriate interest rate. JEL-Codes: E000.