This paper argues that, despite the substantial independence offered by the Maastricht Treaty, the ESCB will wish to bind itself by a set of voluntary rules in the conduct of monetary policy. This binding will occur because of the demands of policy itself. The ESCB as such has no history of a...

The aim of the present analysis is to shed light on the question whether Central Banks should publish their macroeconomic forecasts, and what could possibly be gained in monetary policy if they did so. We show that disclosing the Central Bank’s assessment of the prevailing inflationary...