A decade of dissent: Explaining the dissent voting behavior of Bank of England MPC members

We examine the dissent voting record of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. Contrary to findings in the FOMC literature (for example Havrilesky and Schweitzer in The Political Economy of American Monetary Policy, pp. 197-210, 1990; Chappell et al. in Q. J. Econ. 108(1):185-218, 1993), the effects of membersa?? career backgrounds and the political channel of appointment on voting behavior are negligible, reflecting the distinct institutional constraints and incentives associated with UK monetary policy. Our findings also suggest that literature which characterizes voting behavior as being predominantly determined by membersa?? internal or external status is overly simplistic. This view is supported by econometric results appertaining to the introduction of memberspecific fixed-effects, which account for possible unobserved heterogeneity.