The interest rate assumptions for macroeconomic forecasts differ considerably among central banks. Common approaches are given by the assumption of constant interest rates, interest rates expected by market participants, or the central bank’s own interest rate expectations. From a theoretical...

Recent research has found that macroeconomic survey forecasts of uncertainty exhibit several deficiencies, such as horizon-dependent biases and lower accuracy than simple unconditional uncertainty forecasts. We examine the inflation uncertainty forecasts from the Bank of England, the Banco...

I assess how dissenting views on appropriate monetary policy result in disagreement about the macroeconomic outlook of Federal Open Market Committee members. FOMC members that voted for a higher Fed Funds Rate than the majority of voters also forecast higher inflation rates, while they forecast...

Recent research in international trade emphasizes the importance of firms’ extensive margins for understanding overall patterns of trade as well as how firms respond to specific events such as trade liberalization. In this paper, we use detailed U.S. trade statistics to provide a broad...

Yes, they would. In a randomized control trial, we provide groups of respondents from the Bundesbank Online Panel Households with information about a hypothetical alternative ECB monetary policy regime akin to the Federal Reserve’s flexible average inflation targeting (AIT). Inflation...

We study how households adjust their medium-term inflation expectations under the new ECB strategy. We find that survey respondents make little difference between the previous strategy of targeting inflation rates close to but below 2% and the new strategy with a symmetric 2% target. Yet,...