One role of monetary policy is to coordinate expectations in the economy and greater transparency of monetary policy may lead to greater coordination. But if transparent monetary policy helps coordinate expectations, then it must also magnify mistakes.

We examine the impact of public information in an economy where agents also have diverse private information. Our work builds on seminal contributions by Townsend (1983) and Phelps (1983), and more recently Woodford (2002), which emphasized the importance of higher-order beliefs – that is,...

Recent trends toward greater central bank independence and the adoption of formal inflation targeting by several countries have served to emphasise the importance of communication policy. In this paper, we explore some of the economic effects of public information that arise whenever public...

This paper examines the impact of public information in an economy where agents also have diverse private information. Since disclosures by central banks are an important source of public information, we are able to assess how the words of central bankers shape expectations, in addition to their...