The Making of Hawks and Doves: Inflation Experiences on the FOMC
The Making of Hawks and Doves? Ulrike Malmendier1,∗ UC Berkeley, NBER, CEPR, and CESIfo Stefan Nagel2 University of Chicago, NBER, CEPR, and CESIfo Zhen Yan3 Cornerstone Research Abstract Personal experiences of inflation strongly influence the hawkish or dovish leanings of central bankers. For all members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) since 1951, we estimate an adaptive learning rule based on their lifetime inflation data. The resulting experience-based forecasts have significant predictive power for members' FOMC voting decisions, the hawkishness of the tone of their speeches, as well as the heterogeneity in their semi-annual inflation projections. Averaging over all FOMC members present at a meeting, inflation experiences also help to explain the federal funds target rate, over and above conventional Taylor rule components. Keywords: Monetary policy, Experience effects, Availability bias, Inflation forecasts, Federal Funds rate JEL: E50, E03, D84 ?We thank Scott Baker, Michael McMahon, Ricardo Reis, David Robinson, Christina Romer, David Romer, Jeremy Stein, and workshop participants at the Bank of Finland (Finlands Bank/Suomen Pankki), Bank of Sweden (Sveriges Riksbank), Harvard University, London School of Economics, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Northwestern University, Stanford University, Stockholm School of Economics, Temple University, UC Berkeley, University of Bonn, University of Chicago, University of Michigan Economics Department and Law School, Vanderbilt University, as well as the NBER SI Monetary Economics meeting and the American Economic Assocation meeting, Research in Behavioral Finance Conference 2016, and Annual Research Conference of the European Central Bank for helpful comments. Canyao Liu, Jonas Sobott, Marius G¨unzel,Jeffrey Zeidel, and Albert Lee provided excellent research assistance.
[Show full text]