The U.S. Federal Reserve has been steadily shrinking its balance sheet as part of its effort to normalize policy following the financial crisis. Other central banks have announced similar intentions, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of an unprecedented amount of liquidity from the global...

In an earlier paper (Blinder and Morgan, 2005), we created an experimental apparatus in which Princeton University students acted as ersatz central bankers, making monetary policy decisions both as individuals and in groups. In this study, we manipulate the size and leadership structure of...

We re-examine the Morris and Shin (2002) model, but assume that players hold proper priors. This sharply alters equilibrium behavior, and welfare, particularly when coordination dominates individual payoffs. Whereas under improper priors the social value of public information is smallest, and...

Two laboratory experiments - one a statistical urn problem, the other a monetary policy experiment - were run to test the commonly-believed hypothesis that groups make decisions more slowly than individuals do. Surprisingly, this turns out not to be true there is no significant difference in...