Suchergebnisse

The influence of partisan and electoral considerations on the monetary policy voting behavior of Federal Reserve Governors is investigated in the context of a model permitting the estimation of reaction functions on the basis of FOMC voting records. The results suggest that once we have controlled for the state of the economy and for the prevailing stance of monetary policy, both partisan ideologies and partisan loyalties appear to play an important role in the Governors'voting calculus.

In this essay, we focus on three district Federal Reserve Bank presidents who took on the role of public intellectual in the 1970s and early 1980s. They reflected their districts' economic concerns, presenting them and their own views at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) while expressing both in public pronouncements in speeches and in print. Despite possible dissonance, the presidents were able to integrate information emerging from their district constituents with the overall state of the national economy in their input to the FOMC, while explaining the economic situation—in the framework of their economic worldviews—to the public at large, that is to say, both communicating their views externally and disturbing the internal status quo of economic thinking at the Federal Reserve.

ABSTRACTThe annexation activity of municipalities is studied in a market framework. A sample of 659 municipalities of 25,000 or more population is used to analyze the effects of municipal government structure and annexation statutes on municipal government behavior. Both annexation laws and types of municipal governments are found to be significant determinants of the level of municipal annexation activity. Since some studies indicate that annexation activity affects municipal efficiency, these results have policy implications for state legislators who control the institutions under which municipalities operate.

We use evidence from detailed records of FOMC deliberations to argue that time inconsistency theory can help explain the excessive monetary expansion that characterized Arthur Burns's tenure as Federal Reserve Chairman (1970–1978). The records suggest that the Fed perceived a Phillips curve tradeoff and political pressures that made it difficult to adopt disinflationary policies; the tendency toward excessively expansionary policy was exacerbated by the short‐run planning horizon the Committee faced in each of its meetings. We argue that comparative static predictions of the time inconsistency model are consistent with the rise of inflation during the Burns years and its subsequent fall.