Symbolic capital of the Fed in the Greenspan era
The analysis of the credibility channel of monetary policy will be reformulated in the context of the notion of symbolic capital which is based on the methodology of the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. Symbolic power is the power to make things with words and monetary policy is pursued to an increasing degree with symbolic instruments (speeches, minutes, bias-talk). Therefore it is necessary to identify the relevant audiences and to analyse empirically the understanding and misunderstanding of elites. In our approach symbolic capital of the Fed has to be analysed as the outcome of a process in which competing elites use their specific form of capital (economic, political, institutional and scientific) to influence the power structure in the monetary policy field. The central bank forms with others a field of struggle for symbolic capital. The monetary policy field has four dominant agents (elites): central bank, politics, science and finance.The latter are regarded by the central bank as particularly important (the central bank policy is studied by analysing the transcripts of the FOMC meetings 1987 -1994). Thus, a questionnaire to the chief-economists of the primary dealers of the FED allowed us to clarify the perceptions of financial market agents. .