Dr McMahon assists Chief Economist of the Bank of England
Dr McMahon assists Chief Economist of the Bank of England
Wednesday 19 Nov 2014Research by Dr. Michael McMahon referenced in a speech by Chief Economist of the Bank of England.
On Monday 17 November, Andrew Haldane spoke at the Royal College of Medicine conference on Leadership: stress and hubris. During his speech he discussed how psychological biases can affect policy making and how the institutional design of policy making committees at the Bank of England have been designed to counteract those effects.
The speech referenced some of Dr. McMahon’s papers and used some of the original analysis that he had completed for Andrew’s speech:
“Nonetheless, Committee-based decision-making, especially by consensus, does not remove the risk of conformity risk. Indeed, it could even propagate groupthink if cross-pollination becomes rather too effective. As an illustration, Michael McMahon from Warwick University has undertaken a detailed text-based analysis of MPC minutes to assess the importance of certain “topics” in shaping the MPC’s deliberations.”