As a particular form of transparency, nowadays some central banks publish their interest rate forecasts while many others refuse to do that. Whether the publication is good or bad for economic performance and social welfares is now a hotly debatable subject. This paper provides a review of the...

We study zero interest-rate policy in response to a large negative demand shock when long-run expectations can fall over time. Because falling expectations make monetary policy less effective by raising real interest rates, the optimal forward guidance policy makes large front-loaded promises to...

We develop and apply a procedure to test the welfare implications of a beauty and non-beauty contest based on survey forecasts of interest rates and yields in a large country sample over an extended period of time. In most countries, interest rate forecasts are unbiased and consistent with both...