Variety of economic judgement and monetary policy-making by committee

With the increasing attention to how monetary policy is communicated has come a focus on the scope for diverse messages to arise from the committee making the decision. While the existing literature sees the source of such diversity in relation to a ‘correct’ decision based on one ‘true’ model, we explore the implications of diversity as being instead the norm within a pluralist approach to knowledge. By considering judgement as the core of decision-making and uncertainty as conditioning judgement, we develop a theory of decision-making by committee under uncertainty. Our case study is the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. We conclude with a hypothesis about the tendency to policy inaction in different circumstances, notably where there are confident but conflicting judgements within the committee, on the one hand, and where there is agreement that a high level of uncertainty clouds judgement, on the other. This contrasts with the conventional association of diversity of MPC opinion with uncertainty (both as cause and effect)

Monetary Policy by Signal

First paragraph: The way in which monetary policy is understood, both in practice and in the theoretical literature, has evolved in significant ways over the last few decades. Most significant, arguably, is an increasing awareness of the importance of the presentation of monetary policy. Central bankers have long been aware of the importance of the signalling effect of interest rate decisions on the one hand (Dow and Saville, 1988), and the care with which official pronouncements should be worded on the other. But it is only recently that there has been public discussion by central banks of the means by which monetary policy decisions are reached (e.g. Bank of England, 1999). At the same time, the theoretical literature has increased its focus on information, and information asymmetries between the monetary authorities and markets, as a critical element determining the outcome of monetary policy decisions. In particular there has been an increased focus on the transparency of monetary policy decision-making (see Geraats, 2002, for a review). But analysis of signals in relation to uncertainty qualifies the case for transparency. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the signalling aspect of monetary policy in terms of an analysis of uncertainty. In particular, we consider how the central bank signals its own uncertainty

The ordering of green values: ecological justification in public fracking controversies in Germany and Poland

The article presents a comparative study of shale gas media debates in Germany and Poland. Drawing from the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD), it addresses discursive conflicts over the use of hydraulic fracturing and its environmental impacts in both countries. The authors relate their analysis to the theoretical debate that emerged in the 1990s in French sociology concerning the question of “green justifications” that form a specific way of how social actors intervene, dispute, and build compromises in public discussions to protect non-human entities. Referring to these discussions, this article identifies several ecological justification clusters and the associated social actors that are ‘compromised’ or enclosed in existing orders of worth