Central Bank Hawks and Doves Cheat Sheet

The views of InTouch Capital Markets on the hawks and doves at the European Central Bank (ECB), the FOMC and the Bank of England (BoE) and a recap on the current and future voting members.  We get asked all the time questions like “is the Fed’s Rosengren a hawk or a dove?”, “who are the doves on the ECB?” and “are the voters on the FOMC this year more dovish or hawkish?”.  Here we answer all these questions.

New Absolute Hawk/Dove Scale

We have updated our analysis to introduce a new absolute hawk/dove scale alongside the relative scale we had before, so that it would be easier to understand the position of each central banker. The lowest bound on the scale indicates “very hawkish” members and the upper bound specifies “very dovish” members.

FOMC Hawks, Doves and Voters

 ECB Hawks, Doves and Voters

For more detail on the ECB hawk/dove analysis, visit the in depth Econostream News page (free access).

Bank of England (BoE) MPC Hawks, Doves and Voters

What is a Central Bank Hawk or Dove?

In general, “hawks” are the members who tend to want tighter monetary policy to temper inflation and growth whilst “doves” tend to want looser monetary policy to support growth and inflation.

Note – InTouch Capital Markets bases its classifications of hawks and doves on recent speeches and voting patterns by the respective members but all views are subjective – very few central bankers actually describe themselves as a hawk or dove. Our views may differ a little from others’. It’s also worth considering that some members tend to stick to being always hawkish or dovish, whilst others tend to be more flexible in their views, switching from time to time.

Authors: Anmol Agrawal, Michael Colman