Central banks' announcements that rates are expected to remain low could signal either a weak macroeconomic outlook, which would slow expenditures, or a more accommodative stance, which may stimulate economic activity. We use the Survey of Professional Forecasters to show that, when the Fed gave...

Central banks' announcements that future interest rates will remain low could signal either a weak future macroeconomic outlook - which is bad news - or a future expansionary monetary policy - which is good news. In this paper, we use the Survey of Professional Forecasters to show that these two...

We analyze the effects of forward guidance when agents have heterogeneous interpretations of whether forward guidance contains a commitment on future policy actions. Using survey expectations, we document that forward guidance lowered disagreement about future short-term interest rates to...

A number of central banks in advanced countries use ranges, or bands, around their inflationtarget to formulate their monetary policy strategy. The adoption of such ranges has beenproposed by some policymakers in the context of the Fed and the ECB reviews of theirstrategies. Using a standard New...

Whereas the bulk of the literature on DSGE models provides a rationale for inflation targeting strategies, there is no model doing such a job for the strategy implemented for almost ten years now by the Eurosystem and known as the "two-pillar monetary policy strategy". We try to address this...