National influences inside the ECB: an assessment from central bankers' statements

This paper aims at discovering the national influences inside the Governing Council of the ECB for setting interest rates. We use a textual analysis of national newspaper articles related to each European central banker to analyze their expressed preferences. We proceed to a cluster analysis with the results obtained and fi nd that there were favorable conditions for the emergence of coalitions of central bankers according to their common economic concerns. Next, a Taylor rule of each coalition is estimated as well as their desired interest rate. Finally, we assess the contribution of each coalition in setting the interest rate fixed by the ECB. Our results show that the identi fied coalitions have an influence inside the Governing Council for setting the interest rate, that is approximately equal to their respective economic weight in the euro area