The literature on the behavior of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has focused on static voting patterns. We find statistical support for a dynamic pattern using a panel reaction function to analyze MPC votes over the 1997-2008 period. We find that internal and external...

This study is part of the Kobe Research Project. It documents the exchange rate policies and the financial liberalisation processes of both the Netherlands and Thailand over the past decades. In view of these experiences and of the academic literature, the study seeks to identify requirements...

This paper models monetary policy decisions as being taken by an interacting group of heterogeneous policy makers, organized in a committee. Disclosing the premises on which an individual view on the interest rate is based is likely to provide value added in terms of the quality of the...

Most monetary policy committees decide on interest rates using a simple majority voting rule. Given the inherent heterogeneity of committee members, this voting rule is suboptimal in terms of the quality of the interest rate decision, but popular for other (political) reasons. We show that a...

We investigate the implications for he setting of interest rates when monetary policy decisions are taken by a committee, in which a subset of members may meet prior to the voting in the commitee and therefore has the possibility to reach consensus ex ante to vote unanimously ex post. We allow...

Monetary Policy Committees differ in the way the interest rate proposal is prepared and presented in the policy meeting. In this paper we show analytically how different arrangements could affect the voting behaviour of individual MPC members and therefore policy outcomes. We then apply our...

This paper is part of the Kobe Research Project and documents the Dutch and Thai experiences regarding exchange rate policy, capital controls, and developments in the banking sector. In view of these experiences, it seeks to identify requirements for successful currency regimes, in particular...