Central bank announcements have strong effects on interest rates, but small or even counterintuitive effects on economic expectations. Based on tick-by-tick futures prices on bonds and stock prices, I confirm these seemingly puzzling results for the euro area and provide evidence that they are...

Monetary policy became the major tool of economic policy to counteract the financial crisis of 2008/2009. The underlying macroeconomic consensus is that inflation rates of 2% are consistent with a stable rise of economic growth. While most central banks follow this guideline, which is widely...