Ideational Ecologies in Central Banking: Ideas and Esteem at Jackson Hole

In policy fields where technical knowledge matters when defining policy options, elites require spaces and events where they can scrutinize ideas. Accordingly, interactions in central banking do not simply take the form of bargaining between state agencies. Another activity involves an iterative round of exchanges, which seek to establish what constitutes legitimate central banking knowledge with reference to economic science. How do central banks select ideas, how do forms of contestation and patterns of authority relations shape this process, and how does that process in turn allocate authority? This paper suggests the primary event for this kind of activity is the Jackson Hole annual symposium, run by the Kansas City Federal Reserve since 1982. The paper examines Jackson Hole as a recurring event where an ‘ideational ecology’ can be identified: a time when economic ideas are presented in a way which affirms or rebuffs prevailing academic thinking and policy performance. This is the binary dependent variable: are prevailing ideas challenged or reaffirmed? The independent variable is elite economic scientists who present analyses at the event. The conditional variable is the degree of approval from key interlocutors who react, and bestow or withdraw esteem, primarily through their role as selected discussants. Covering the period 1982-2014, the paper proceeds in three ways: 1. it investigates, with content analysis, the economic discussions as relating to macroeconomics, financial stability and the real economy to establish how much consensus/discord exist in relation to the status quo; 2. it provides an analysis of speakers, discussants, participants through social network analysis; and 3. it uses speaker biographies in sequence analysis to determine who is permitted to speak and when. These forms of analysis are integrated to allow us to see how different elements contribute to produce an ideational ecology in central banking via the Jackson Hole event.