FEDERAL RESERVE TRANSCRIPT PUBLICATION AND REGIONAL REPRESENTATION

In: Contemporary economic policy: a journal of Western Economic Association International, Band 28, Heft 2, S. 162-170

Abstract

This article looks at disagreement within the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee, the Federal Open Market Committee or FOMC, following a change in transparency practices taken in 1993 to publish verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings. Other literature has examined the effects of opening the FOMC's deliberations to public view and provided empirical evidence that the publication of transcripts made policymakers less willing to voice disagreement with the chairman's policy proposal. This article adds to that work by examining whether regional variables are important to the analysis and whether the transcription effects are robust to the inclusion of regional variables. The results indicate that transcription effects are indeed robust, regardless of the regional indicator used, and that larger Federal Reserve districts may be more likely to voice agreement with a given policy proposal. (JEL E42, E58, E65, F33)