My reluctance to go down that route stems from a concern that we would slip towards a degree of individualism where members were no longer listening to each other. It would not be possible for members to polish their statements after the meeting, as they would then be able to tweak their text, ever so slightly of course, in the light of the market reaction to our decision and so on. So highly polished statements would be brought to the meeting, with perhaps even a degree of competition in the depth of the analysis or the beauty of the prose. But the very point of a committee is that we 26 should listen to each other, and then make up our own minds. That includes trying to persuade one’s  unexpired parts of the terms of existing Committee members, but do not include the terms of Howard Davies and David Walton. 25  For example, Weber, A., 2007, “Monetary policy strategy and communication”, speech at the Deutsche Bundesbank/Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland conference on “Monetary policy strategy: old issues and new challenges”, Frankfurt, May 2007. 26  See section on “Does discussion help?” in Lombardelli, Proudman and Talbot, op. cit., page 199. 6  BIS Review 66/2007  colleagues. Over the years, 27 I have definitely seen occasions where individual members have altered their position during the course of a meeting.
Indeed, apart from the defining characteristic that the internals have full-time executive responsibilities at the Bank, the main distinction to date is that internal members tend to serve for longer; an average of around five and three quarter years, compared with just over three years for the external members. 24  22  Walsh, C. E., 1995, “Optimal contracts for central bankers”, American Economic Review, volume 85, number 1, sets out how a contract between government and the monetary authority can give the latter the incentive to pursue society’s macroeconomic goals in a time-consistent manner. Rogoff’s “conservative central banker” relies on the central bank being more averse to inflation than society as a whole. 23  See Gerlach-Kristen, P., 2003, “Insiders and outsiders at the Bank of England”, Central Banking, volume 24, number 1. 24  To date, the time on the Committee served by externals has ranged from a minimum of 1.4 years to a maximum of 8.9 years. For internals, the corresponding range is from 2.25 years to 11 years. These ranges are calculated by including the  BIS Review 66/2007  5  That seems to me to be consonant with the political economy considerations behind the design of the Committee. The internal members provide a bedrock of accumulated policy expertise and commitment. The externals, coming from outside the Bank and turning over more frequently, keep the debate and the process fresh.