Premium
From doves to hawks: A spatial analysis of voting in the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England
Author(s) -
HIX SIMON,
HØYLAND BJØRN,
VIVYAN NICK
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2010.01916.x
Subject(s) - ideal point , monetary policy , voting , ideal (ethics) , position (finance) , government (linguistics) , economics , public administration , actuarial science , political science , politics , finance , macroeconomics , law , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , mathematics
This article examines the making of monetary policy in the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2008 by analysing voting behaviour in the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It provides a new set of measures for the monetary policy preferences of individual MPC members by estimating a Bayesian item response model. The article demonstrates the usefulness of these measures by comparing the ideal points of outgoing MPC members with their successors and by looking at changes over time in the median ideal point on the MPC. The analysis indicates that the British Government has been able to move the position of the median voter on the MPC through its appointments to the Committee. This highlights the importance of central bank appointments for monetary policy.