Trust in the monetary authority

Trust in policy makers uctuates signi…cantly over the cycle and a¤ects the transmission mechanism. Despite this it is absent from the literature. We build a monetary model embedding trust cycles; the latter emerge as an equilibrium phenomenon of a game-theoretic interaction between atomistic agents and the monetary authority. Trust a¤ects agentsstochastic discount factors, namely the price of future risk, and through this it interacts with the monetary trans- mission mechanism. Using data from the Eurobarometer surveys we analyze the link between trust and the transmission mechanism of macro and monetary shocks: empirical results are in line with theoretical ones.