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To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2009.01.002 Byline: Etienne Farvaque (a), Norimichi Matsueda (b), Pierre-Guillaume Meon (c) Keywords: Monetary policy committees; Decision procedures; Interest-rate; Monetary union Abstract: This paper relates the volatility of interest rates to the collective nature of monetary policymaking in monetary unions. Several decision rules are modelled, including hegemonic and democratic procedures, and also committees headed by a chairman. A ranking of decision rules in terms of the volatility of policy rates is obtained, showing that the presence of a chairman has a cooling effect. However, members of a monetary union are better off under symmetric rules (voting, averaging, bargaining), unless they themselves chair the union. The results are robust to the inclusion of heterogeneities among members of the monetary union. Author Affiliation: (a) Equippe - Universites de Lille, Faculte des Sciences Economiques et Sociales, Universite de Lille 1, 59655 Villeneuve d'Ascq Cedex, France (b) School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, 1-1-155 Uegahara, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 662-0851, Japan (c) DULBEA, University of Brussels, CP-140, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium Article History: Received 11 April 2008; Accepted 5 January 2009

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2008.00823_11.x Byline: ETIENNE FARVAQUE (1) Author Affiliation: (1)Equippe - University of Lille 1