There has been a remarkable rise in the transparency of monetary policy during the last two decades. This paper provides an overview of the ways in which central banks have been providing more information about their monetary policymaking. Furthermore, it reviews the theoretical literature on...

Many central banks have become more transparent during the last decade, in particular about macroeconomic prospects. This paper shows that such economic transparency could give central banks greater flexibility to respond to macroeconomic shocks. In particular, it allows central banks to...

It is argued in literature that transparency may be detrimental to welfare. Morris and Shin (2002) suggest reducing the precision of public information or withholding it. The latter seems to be unrealistic. Thus, the issue is not whether central bank should disclose or not its information, but...

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...

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....

Central banks worldwide have become more transparent. An important reason is that democratic societies expect more openness from public institutions. Policymakers also see transparency as a way to improve the predictability of monetary policy, thereby lowering interest rate volatility and...

Central bank transparency has received great deal of attention in recent years. However, the theoretical literature has not yet reached a consensus on the effect a higher degree of transparency has on economic welfare. In this paper, we focus one aspect of transparency, the transparency of...

Attempts by governments to stop bubbles by issuing warnings seem unsuccessful. This paper examines the effects of public warnings using a simple model of riding bubbles. We show that public warnings against a bubble can stop it, if investors believe that a warning is issued in a definite range...

This paper studies the social value of information about the future when agents are rationally inattentive. In a stylized OLG model of inflation the central bank (CB) can set money supply in response to the current price. The CB has perfect foresight about the future T shocks and releases this...