Striving to Be “Clearly Open” and “Crystal Clear”: Monetary Policy Communication of the CNB

The Czech National Bank has a respectable track record in terms of its policy actions and the corresponding inflation outturns. The authors analyze its main communication tools – inflation targets, inflation forecasts, verbal assessments of the inflation risks contained in quarterly inflation reports, and the voting within the CNB Board – to assess clarity of communication. They find that these tools provided a very clear message in about three out of every four observations in our 2001–2005 sample.