Disagreement, Regional Representation, and Federal Reserve Transcript Publication

Abstract

This short paper 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 chair-man's policy proposal. This paper adds to that work by examining whether regional variables are important to the analysis and whether the transcription effects change when regional variables are included in the estimation. The results suggest that regional effects, as represented by the voting share of each Federal Reserve district, are important in explaining disagreements voiced during FOMC deliberations and do not diminish transcription effects.