The Politics of Central Bank Appointments

Ainsley, Caitlin

doi:10.1086/693097

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…This risk is particularly acute in the case of technocrat finance ministers who are in charge of the government's budget and tax policies (Alexiadou ; Hallerberg ) and considering that expert ministers are harder to monitor than non‐experts (Dewan & Hortala‐Vallve ). Even within politically independent agencies, individual policy makers have significant policy influence (Adolph ; Ainsley ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commitment or expertise? Technocratic appointments as political responses to economic crises

Alexiadou

Günaydın

2019

European J Political Res

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Why do prime ministers or presidents appoint non‐elected experts, also known as technocrats, during economic crises? Do they appoint them for their expertise or for their commitment to pro‐market reforms? Answering this question is crucial for understanding and predicting the longer‐term role of technocrats in democracies. With the aid of unique data on the political and personal background of finance ministers in 13 parliamentary and semi‐presidential European democracies this article shows that commitment, not expertise is the primary driver of technocratic appointments during major economic crises. Technocrats are preferred over experienced politicians when the latter lack commitment to policy reform. An important implication of the findings is that technocratic appointments to top economic portfolios in West European countries are unlikely to become the norm outside economic crises, assuming economic crises are short‐lived and not recurring.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commitment or expertise? Technocratic appointments as political responses to economic crises

Alexiadou

Günaydın

2019

European J Political Res

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“…Recent work has also emphasized the role of uncertainty in monetary policy and appointments. Ainsley () presents a novel model of central bank appointments in which the ideology of the central bank appointee responds to economic uncertainty. Our model differs from Ainsley's in two ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ainsley () presents a novel model of central bank appointments in which the ideology of the central bank appointee responds to economic uncertainty. Our model differs from Ainsley's in two ways. First, uncertainty is conceptualized much differently in our model than in Ainsley.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Allies or commitment devices? A model of appointments to the Federal Reserve

Schnakenberg

Turner

Uribe-McGuire

2017

Economics & Politics

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We present a model of executive‐legislative bargaining over appointments to independent central banks in the face of an uncertain economy with strategic economic actors. The model highlights the contrast between two idealized views of Federal Reserve appointments. In one view, politicians prefer to appoint conservatively biased central bankers to overcome credible commitment problems that arise in monetary policy. In the other, politicians prefer to appoint allies, and appointments are well described by the spatial model used to describe appointments to other agencies. Both ideals are limiting cases of our model, which depend on the level of economic uncertainty. When economic uncertainty is extremely low, politicians prefer very conservative appointments. When economic uncertainty increases, politicians’ prefer central bank appointees closer to their own ideal points. In the typical case, the results are somewhere in between: equilibrium appointments move in the direction of politician's preferences but with a moderate conservative bias.

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“…With informative voting, researchers can locate central bankers on a single common dimension, based on the correlations in their voting behavior (see for e.g. Chappell et al, 2000;Chang, 2003;Gerlach-Kristen and Meade, 2010;Hix et al, 2010;Adolph, 2013;Eij nger et al, 2017;Ainsley, 2017). Previous research has presented some possible problems with applying spatial voting models to central bank decision making.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Because central bank committees often take roll-call votes during committee meetings like in legislatures, researchers commonly apply spatial voting models to help understand central bank decisionmaking. With informative voting, researchers can locate central bankers on a single common dimension, based on the correlations in their voting behavior (see e.g., Chappell, Havrilesky and Roy McGregor 2000; Chang 2003; Gerlach-Kristen and Meade 2010; Hix, Høyland, and Vivyan 2010; Adolph 2013; Ainsley 2017; Eijffinger, Mahieu, and Raes 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

A textual Taylor rule: estimating central bank preferences combining topic and scaling methods

Baerg

Lowe

2018

PSRM

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Scholars o en use voting data to estimate central bankers' policy preferences but consensus voting is commonplace. To get around this, we combine topic-based text analysis and scaling methods to generate theoretically motivated comparative measures of central bank preferences on the U.S. Federal Open Market Commi ee leading up to the nancial crisis in a way that does not depend on voting behavior. We apply these measures to a number of applications in the literature. For example, we nd that FOMC members that are Federal Reserve Bank Presidents from districts experiencing higher unemployment are also more likely to emphasize unemployment in their speech. We also con rm that commi ee members on schedule to vote are more likely to express consensus opinion than their o schedule voting counterparts.

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The Politics of Central Bank Appointments

Cited by 23 publications

References 30 publications

Commitment or expertise? Technocratic appointments as political responses to economic crises

Commitment or expertise? Technocratic appointments as political responses to economic crises

Allies or commitment devices? A model of appointments to the Federal Reserve

A textual Taylor rule: estimating central bank preferences combining topic and scaling methods

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