Most central banks effect changes to their target or policy rate in discrete increments (e.g., multiples of 0.25%) following public announcements on scheduled dates. Still, for most applications, researchers rely on the assumption that the policy rate changes linearly with economic conditions...

We explain federal funds target rate decisions using macroeconomic variables and Federal Reserve 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 our communication...

Central banks no longer set the short-term interest rates that they use for monetary policy purposes by manipulating the supply of banking system reserves, as in conventional economics textbooks; this process normally involves little or no variation in the supply of central bank liabilities. In...

Whether a central bank should share with the public its views about the future evolution of short term interest rates is an unresolved issue. Disclosing this information might allow a more precise control of market expectations and a more effective achievement of the ultimate goals of the...

The paper proposes new measures of unexpected monetary decisions to characterise two important dimensions of the European Central Bank's monetary policy. Our new surprise measures outperform compellingly the traditionally used monetary shocks in explaining daily variation of euro area interest...

This paper investigates whether the degree of interdependence between the United States and the euro area economies has changed with the advent of EMU. It addresses this issue from the perspective of financial markets by analysing the effects of monetary policy and macroeconomic news on daily...

This paper investigates, for the first time, the reactions of markets to the monetary policy decisions of their own Central Bank and to the decisions of the Central Banks of other countries. In particular, using daily interest rates to estimate the impact of the monetary policy announcements of...

This paper investigates whether the degree and the nature of economic and monetary policy interdependence between the United States and the euro area have changed with the advent of EMU. Using real-time data, it addresses this issue from the perspective of financial markets by analysing the...

In this paper, we study the influence of central bank transparency and informal central bank communication on the money market adjustment process between two interest rate decisions. The sample covers nine major central banks for the period from January 1999 to July 2007. We find, first, that...