Does Forecasts Transparency Affect Macroeconomic Volatility in Developing Countries ? Evidence From Quasi-Natural Experiments

In this paper, we empirically investigate the link between forecasts transparency and macroeconomic volatility as measured by inflation and output growth volatility in developing economies. We adopt the quasi-random controlled experiments methodology that divides our sample of 49 developing countries into three categories on the basis of their forecasts transparency. The first category is composed of central banks that are completely opaque over our sample period. The second type of countries is constantly transparent about their forecasts over the period of study while the third category includes central banks that have recently started to disclose their forecasts. In contrast to the previous literature, we interestingly find that increasing forecasts transparency unambiguously leads to higher macroeconomic volatility in developing countries. Indeed, we find that both groups of countries that constantly disclose their forecasts and that have only recently started to disclose their forecasts experience an increase in their macroeconomic volatility compared to the remaining group of countries that are completely opaque. Our results however indicate that forecasts transparency may have some stabilizing effects if and only if it is practiced along with other forms of institutional transparency.