The end result of major sporting events has been shown to affect next-day stock returns through shifts in investor mood. By studying the soccer matches that led to the elimination of France and Italy from the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we show that mood-related pricing effects can materialize as...

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly importantaspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge newscholarly literature on central bank communicationmostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this...

At the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, many soccer matches were played during stock market trading hours, providing us with a natural experiment to analyze fluctuations in investor attention. Using minute-by-minute trading data for fifteen international stock exchanges, we present three key...

This paper studies ECB and Bundesbank communication on monetary policyduring the first years of the European Economic and Monetary Union. We study whether statements by different (groups of) central bankers have been contradictory and whether differences have diminished over time. We find that...

We study whether the sensitivity of Swedish interest rates to economic news was affected by the zero lower bound and the Riksbank.s monetary policies. Our results suggest that the sensitivity of interest rate swaps to Swedish macroeconomic news was reduced at the effective zero lower bound at...

When does the general public lose trust in banks? We provide empirical evidence using responses by Dutch survey participants to eight hypothetical scenarios. We find that members of the general public care strongly about executive compensation. Negative media reports, falling stock prices, and...

Based on annual household surveys between 2003 and 2012, we show that owners have a rosy picture of their current house value and hold optimistic views on the historical and expected change in house value compared to general price trends. Optimism is both driven by loss aversion and an endowment...

We study whether clarity of central bank inflation reports affects return volatility in financial markets. We measure clarity of reports by the Czech National Bank, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and Sveriges Riksbank using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, a standard readability...

Since its inception, the European Central Bank (ECB) has regarded communication as anintegral part of its monetary policy. This paper describes and evaluates ECB communications during the first decade of its operation.We conclude that, overall, ECB communication has contributed to the...

By applying readability statistics to the Humphrey-Hawkins testimonies given by the Federal Reserve Chairman, I test whether the clarity of central bank communication affects volatility in financial markets. There are three key results. First, when clarity matters, the results are unequivocal:...