Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication -- mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this...

Central bank credibility plays a pivotal role in much of the modern literature on monetary policy, yet it is difficult to measure or even assess objectively. A survey of central bankers was conducted to determine their attitudes on two important issues: why credibility matters, and how...

Central banks are increasingly reaching out to the general public to motivate and explain their monetary policy actions. One major aim of this outreach is to guide inflation expectations; another is to ensure accountability and create trust. This article surveys a rapidly-growing literature on...

We ask whether recent changes in monetary policy due to the financial crisis will be temporary or permanent. We present evidence from two surveys--one of central bank governors, the other of academic specialists. We find that central banks in crisis countries are more likely to have resorted to...

In an earlier paper (Blinder and Morgan, 2005), we created an experimental apparatus in which Princeton University students acted as ersatz central bankers, making monetary policy decisions both as individuals and in groups. In this study, we manipulate the size and leadership structure of...

This paper presents two macro models in which central bank policy has real effects on the supply side of the economy due to credit rationing. In each model, there are two possible regimes, depending on whether credit is or is not rationed. Starting from an unrationed equilibrium, either a large...

This paper examines issues in the current debate over coordination between fiscal and monetary policies. Section I1 uses the traditional targets-instruments approach to assess the potential gains from greater coordination. Since greater coordination is often equated with looser money and tighter...

This paper presents a model of a multi-sector economy in which each sector is characterized by a different type of wage or price stickiness. The various sectors experience the same exogenous shocks and have the same money supply. The analysis shows demand shocks pose no serious problems for...

In dealing with the expectationists' arguments, I will divide them (somewhat artificially) into two groups. Arguments in the first group, which I call "present disaster" arguments, allege that econometric models err by understating the reaction of inflationary expectations. For example, it is...

Two laboratory experiments - one a statistical urn problem, the other a monetary policy experiment - were run to test the commonly-believed hypothesis that groups make decisions more slowly than individuals do. Surprisingly, this turns out not to be true there is no significant difference in...