There has been a remarkable rise in the transparency of monetary policy during the last two decades. This paper provides an overview of the ways in which central banks have been providing more information about their monetary policymaking. Furthermore, it reviews the theoretical literature on...

Central bank independence and transparency have become best practice in monetary policy. This paper cautions that transparency about economic information may not be beneficial in the absence of central bank independence. The reason is that it reduces monetary uncertainty, which could make the...

The paper examines the monetary-fiscal interactions in a monetary union model with uncertainty due to imperfect central bank transparency. We first show that monetary uncertainty disciplines fiscal policymakers and thereby reduces taxes, average inflation and output distortions. However, as more...

The ex ante incentive compatible core of an exchange economy with private information is the (standard) core of a socially designed characteristic function, which expresses the fact that coalitions allocate goods by means of random incentive compatible mechanisms. We first survey some results in...

This paper presents empirical evidence on one aspect of central bank communication policy - formal pronouncements by central bankers - to better understand whether this channel matters and, if so, the nature of the information being transmitted. We examine the relationship between three types of...

We examine “Forward Guidance Contracts”, which make central bankers' utility contingent on the precision of interest-rate forecasts for some time. Such Forward Guidance Contracts are a flexible commitment device and can improve economic performance when the economy is stuck in a liquidity...