In contrast to the once prevailing norm of secrecy and opaqueness, transparency has now become one of the main features characterising the conduct of monetary policy. Detailed analysis of eleven OECD central banks shows that communication practices have converged markedly in the direction of...

The increase in central bank transparency was one of the main developments in central banking in the last two decades. This leads to the question of which effect central bank transparency has on the volatility of exchange rates. According to theoretical considerations, more information could...

Modern central banks increasingly value monetary policy transparency, and attempt to build credibility by communicating their decisions to the public. This paper studies whether the communication of central banks can be used to explain upcoming changes in their most important monetary policy...

Every monetary policy decision by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) is accompanied by a written statement about the state of the economy and the policy outlook, but only every second decision by a published interest rate forecast. We exploit this difference to study the relative influences...

A common finding in the literature is that forward guidance cannot be credible under discretionary policy as long as the zero lower bound is an one-off event. However, this is not the case when recurring episodes of zero interest rates are possible. In this paper, we contribute to this new...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the power of forward guidance at different horizons, shedding new light on the strength of the "forward guidance puzzle". Our identification strategy allows us to disentangle the change in future interest rates stemming from deviations from the...

We analyze the effect of monetary policy transparency on bilateral exchange rate volatility. We test the theoretical predictions of a stylized model using panel data for 62 currencies from 1998 to 2010. We find strong empirical evidence that an increase in the availability of information about...

Most central banks around the world have increased their transparency in the recent past. The greater openness of central bankers manifests itself in the publication of the central banks' own macroeconomic forecasts or the disclosure of minutes and voting records of central bank committees. The...