Economics Commons^™

We show that discretionary policy-making can lead to multiple rational-expectations equilibria where the central bank responds to inflation sentiments, which are not directly related to economic fundamentals. Some equilibria have favorable consequences for welfare, resulting in outcomes superior even to those achieved under timeless-perspective commitment. Moreover, we show that our framework can explain several moments of US data reasonably well. In particular, it provides an alternative explanation for the high degree of inflation persistence found in the data.

We analyze different committee designs in a model with the endogenous participation of experts who have private information about their own abilities. Each committee design involves a test of abilities whose accuracy influences experts’ decisions to participate. We derive the following findings. First, higher wages lead to lower quality experts. Second, an increase in transparency improves the quality of experts on the committee. Third, larger committees attract less able experts than smaller ones, unless the committee operates under full transparency. Fourth, we derive the properties of optimal committees. They involve low wages and can be transparent or opaque.

We integrate monetary policy-making by committee into a New Keynesian model to assess the consequences of the committee's institutional characteristics for inflation, output, and welfare. Our analysis delivers the following results. First, we demonstrate that transparency about the committee's future composition is typically harmful. Second, we show that short terms for central bankers lead to effective inflation stabilization at the expense of comparably high output variability. Third, larger committees generally allow for more efficient stabilization of inflation but possibly for less efficient output stabilization. Fourth, large committees and short terms are therefore socially desirable if the weight on output stabilization …