Federal Monetary Policy: A Comment

We comment on an article published in this journal by Hefeker (2003) and reveal an inconsistency in his analysis of monetary policy in federal monetary unions. We clarify an implicit assumption in his model and show that even when this further assumption is met, Hefeker's (2003) claim that a pure majority vote by the regions and the central government results in a monetary authority consisting solely of regionally appointed governors is not generally valid in the context of his model.