This paper examines the policy rate recommendations of the Bank of Canada's Governing Council (GC) and the C.D. Howe Institute's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) since 2003. We find, first, that differences in the median recommendations between the MPC and the GC are persistent but small (i.e., 25...

A common finding in the literature is that forward guidance cannot be credible under discretionary policy as long as the zero lower bound is an one-off event. However, this is not the case when recurring episodes of zero interest rates are possible. In this paper, we contribute to this new...

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) are shadowed by professionals and academic economists who provide a separate policy rate recommendation in advance of the central bank's announcement. We explore differences between shadow and actual committee decisions based on an...

To which degree can variation in sentiment-based indicators of central bank communication be attributed to changes in macroeconomic, financial, and monetary variables; idiosyncratic speaker effects; sentiment persistence; and random "noise" ? Using the Loughran and McDonald (2011) dictionary on a...

Due to its official mandate, the European Central Bank (ECB) is assumed to maximize an implied objective function that leads it to pursue inflation with a subordinate focus on supporting the general economic policy of the European Union. This objective is – by its very nature – difficult to...

Household heterogeneity has been shown to be an important driver of aggregate demand. In this research, we demonstrate that it also impacts the supply side. We build a model in which heterogeneous households vary in their extent to which they supply production factors (labor and capital). Our...

Using a randomized controlled trial in a 2018 survey of a representative sample of the German population, we study whether providing information about the European Central Bank's (ECB) inflation record in comparison to its inflation target affects people's trust in the central bank. In the...

We explain changes in the Canadian target rate using macroeconomic variables and Bank of Canada (BOC) communication indicators. Econometrically, we employ an ordered probit model of a Taylor rule to predict 60 target rate decisions between 1998 and 2006. We find that BOC communication is...

We explain changes in the federal funds target rate using macroeconomic variables and Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) communication indicators. Econometrically, we employ an ordered probit model of a Taylor rule to predict 75 target rate decisions between 1998 and 2006. We find, first, that...

In this paper, we explore the interest rate setting behavior of newly appointed central bank governors. We use the Kuttner and Posen (2010) sample, which covers 15 OECD countries, and estimate an augmented Taylor (1993) rule for the period 1974-2008. We find, first, that newly appointed...