Central bank communication has changed dramatically over the past decade, with some central banks providing guidance about or explicit forecasts of likely future policy rates. One frequently made argument against the provision by central banks of such guidance or forecasts is that it runs the...

Using data from the period 1970-1991, Romer and Romer (2000) showed that Federal Reserve forecasts of inflation and output were superior to those provided by commercial forecasters. In this paper, we show that this superior forecasting performance deteriorated after 1991. Over the decade...