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...

If central banks value the ex-post accuracy of their forecasts, previously announced interest rate paths might affect the current policy rate. We explore whether this "forecast adherence" has influenced the monetary policies of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Norges Bank, the two central...

This paper presents a model in which investors, acting in self-interest, force interest rates to the levels desired by the monetary authority. If interest rates move out of line with those required by the monetary authority, a statement (an open mouth operation) is all that is needed to restore...

To investigate the extent to which the transparency of the Bank of Canada’s monetary policy has improved, the authors examine empirically – over the period 30 October 2000 to 31 May 2007 – the reaction of Canadian financial markets to official Bank communications, and in particular their...

Statements released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and congressional testimony by Chairman Greenspan are found to significantly affect market interest rates, indicating that central bank talk conveys important information to market participants. These effects arise not only because...

This paper studies the effects of ECB communications about unconventional monetary policy operations on the perceived sovereign risk of Italy over the last five years. More than fifty events concerning non-standard operations are identified and classified with respect to the specific ECB...

Central banks unexpectedly tightening policy rates often observe the exchange value of their currency depreciate, rather than appreciate as predicted by standard models. We document this for Fed and ECB policy days using eventstudies and ask whether an information effect, where the public...

High-frequency changes in interest rates around FOMC announcements are a standard method of measuring monetary policy shocks. However, some recent studies have documented puzzling effects of these shocks on private-sector forecasts of GDP, unemployment, or inflation that are opposite in sign to...

Monetary policy communication is particularly important during unconventional times, because high uncertainty about the economy, the introduction of new policy tools and possible limits to the central bank's toolkit could hamper the predictability of policy actions. We study how monetary policy...