Monetary Policy Committees and DeGrootian Consensus

Reaching a decision on the policy interest-rate often requires members of a monetary policy committee (MPC) to form a consensus. To model this phenomenon, a formal deliberation mechanism that captures how committee members achieve consensus à la Morris DeGroot (1974) is employed. Numerical simulations demonstrate how DeGroot's framework informs how so-called autocratically collegial, genuinely collegial, and individualistic MPCs (Blinder, 2007) reach agreement.