Listening Without Understanding

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Listening Without Understanding

Author Info

Menno Middeldorp ()
Clemens Kool ()
Stephanie Rosenkranz ()

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Abstract

The trend of monetary policy transparency has recently extended itself to the practice of providing guidance on the likely direction of policy rates. There is a risk that communicating the central bank’s own outlook for interest rates actually undermines the financial markets’ ability to predict monetary policy. This paper analyzes this risk using the Diamond (1985) model of a financial market, which includes both costly private information acquisition and a costless public signal. We demonstrate that a sufficiently precise signal from the central bank can result in a deterioration of the financial market’s ability to predict monetary policy through the crowding out of private information acquisition. Central banks could alleviate this risk with a policy of limiting the guidance offered to the financial market in order to leave sufficient scope for private information acquisition.

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Paper provided by Utrecht School of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 07-19.

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Length: 29 pages
Date of creation: Aug 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:use:tkiwps:0719

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Determination of Interest Rates; Term Structure of Interest Rates
E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2007-09-02 (All new papers)
NEP-MAC-2007-09-02 (Macroeconomics)
NEP-MON-2007-09-02 (Monetary Economics)

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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Other versions:
- Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2003. "Inflation scares and forecast-based monetary policy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-41, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

Menno Middeldorp & Stephanie Rosenkranz, 2008. "Information acquisition in an experimental asset market," Working Papers 08-25, Utrecht School of Economics. [Downloadable!]
Menno Middeldorp & Stephanie Rosenkranz, 2008. "Central bank communication and crowding out of private information in an experimental asset market," Working Papers 08-26, Utrecht School of Economics. [Downloadable!]

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