Political Science and Political Economy Working Paper Department of Government London School of Economics No. 3/2014 Monetary Policy Oversight in Comparative Perspective: Britain and America during the Financial Crisis Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey (LSE) Monetary Policy Oversight in Comparative Perspective: Britain and America During the Financial Crisis Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey Government Department London School of Economics and Political Science Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE
[email protected] http://personal.lse.ac.uk/schonhar/ This study examines deliberation on monetary policy oversight in the US and UK between 2006 and 2009. It employs reciprocity as the key criterion for judging the quality of monetary policy oversight deliberation (i.e., committee participants are expected to engage with one another, taking up and responding to the reasons offered by other participants). Using automated content analysis, the empirical finding is that reciprocity is clearly evident in the parliamentary oversight committee, but much less so in the two congressional committees. The two country cases represent very different approaches to legislative oversight, with the UK demonstrating a committee approach both in terms of the testimony of the monetary policy body and of the behaviour of the legislative committee, while the US demonstrates a focus on a series of individual contributions both from the Fed chairman and Members of Congress. In the US, this appears to allow greater scope to divert discussion away from the primary focus of hearings (i.e., monetary policy). 1 I. Introduction In normal economic times, clashes between politicians and central bankers in legislative oversight hearings on monetary policy are not typically considered worthy of headline news coverage.