For central banks, official communications serve as essential monetary policy instruments: In press releases, speeches, and interviews, central banks explain their decisions, manage expectations, and promote confidence in their strategy. This Weekly Report analyzes European Central Bank (ECB)...

This paper uses an estimated open economy DSGE model to examine if constant interest forecasts one and two years ahead can be regarded as modest policy interventions during the period 1993Q4-2002Q4. An intervention is here defined to be modest if it does not trigger the agents to revise their...

We develop and apply a procedure to test the welfare implications of a beauty and non-beauty contest based on survey forecasts of interest rates and yields in a large country sample over an extended period of time. In most countries, interest rate forecasts are unbiased and consistent with both...