Transparency has become an almost universal virtue among central banks. The paper tests empirically, for the case of the Federal Reserve, two hypotheses about central bank transparency derived from the debate of Morris and Shin (2002) and Svensson (2006). First, the paper finds that the...

Central banks have intensified their communication with non-experts - an endeavour which some have argued is bound to fail. This paper studies English and German Twitter traffic about the ECB to understand whether its communication is received by non-experts and how it affects their views. It...

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...

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...

This paper studies the effect of monetary policy on inflation along the income distribution in several euro area countries. It shows that monetary policy has differential effects and identifies two channels which point in opposite directions. On the one hand, different consumption shares imply...

Leaks of confidential information emanating from public institutions have been the focus of a long-standing line of research. Yet, their determinants as well as their potential impact on public views and on policy effectiveness remain elusive. To address this gap, we study leaks from central...

We examine the euro area monetary policy transmission process using post-1999 data, with two main questions in mind: has it changed after u0096 and because of u0096 EMU and, if so, is it becoming homogeneous across countries. Given the data limitations, we concentrate on three blocks of...