Theory and practice of monetary policy have changed significantly over the past three decades. A very important part of today's monetary policy is management of the expectations of private market participants. Publishing and justifying the central bank's best forecast of inflation, output, and...

In this paper we examine a model where firms decide on the intensity of information acquisition about shocks. We analyze how the monetary policy framework impacts on the aggregate amount of information collected by firms. We show that it is socially beneficial to delegate monetary policy to a...

In this paper we assess whether forward guidance for monetary policy regarding the future path of interest rates is desirable. We distinguish between two cases where forward guidance for monetary policy may be helpful. First, forward guidance may reveal private information of the central bank....

We propose a signaling model in which the central bank and firms receive information on cost-push shocks independently from each other. If the firms’ signals are rather unlikely to be informative, central banks should remain silent about their own private signals. If, however, firms are...

We introduce a new type of incentive contract for central bankers: inflation forecast contracts, which make central bankers’ remunerations contingent on the precision of their inflation forecasts. We show that such contracts enable central bankers to influence inflation expectations more...

Using intra-day data, we assess the impact of the press release on euro area monetary data on the different segments of the euro area yield curve. For this purpose, we estimate a relation between the “news” or “surprise” in the released data for annual M3 growth and the move in the...

Conventional wisdom says that commitment eliminates the inflationary bias of monetary policy. However, this paper shows that the inflation bias can persist even when the central bank commits. A simple model is presented in which the central bank precommits by setting the policy instrument, and...

According to most academics and policymakers, transparency in monetary policymaking is desirable. I examine this proposition in a small theoretical model emphasizing forwardlooking private sector behavior. Transparency makes it easier for price setters to infer the central bank's future policy...

Does the general public know what central banks do? Is this kind of knowledge relevant? Using a survey of Dutch households, we investigate these questions for the case of the European Central Bank (ECB). Our findings suggest that knowledge on the ECB’s objectives is far from perfect. Both a...

This paper studies ECB and Bundesbank communication on monetary policy during the first years of the European Economic and Monetary Union. We study whether statements by different (groups of) central bankers have been contradictory and whether differences have diminished over time. We find that...