IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v48y2016i57p5625-5638.html

Transparency and trust: the case of the European Central Bank

Author

Listed:
  • Roman Horvath
  • Dominika Katuscakova

Abstract

We examine how the transparency of the European Central Bank’s monetary policy affects the amount of trust that the citizens of the European Union have in this institution. We use nearly half a million individual responses from the European Commission’s Eurobarometer survey from 2000 to 2011 and estimate probit regressions with sample selection. We find that transparency exerts a non-linear effect on trust. Transparency increases trust, but only up to a certain point; too much transparency harms trust. This result is robust to controlling for a number of macroeconomic conditions, financial stability transparency measures, and economic and socio-demographic characteristics of respondents, including examining respondents in European Union countries that do not use the euro and addressing clustering issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Roman Horvath & Dominika Katuscakova, 2016. "Transparency and trust: the case of the European Central Bank," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(57), pages 5625-5638, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:48:y:2016:i:57:p:5625-5638
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2016.1181833
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2016.1181833
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2016.1181833?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Ehrmann, 2026. "Trust in Central Banks," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 492-504, February.
    2. Giorgio Liotti & Rosaria Rita Canale, 2021. "Trust in the European Union project and the role of ECB," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(2), pages 461-482, July.
    3. Katrien Smuts, 2023. "Exploring the network of individuals that influence the media's inflation message in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2023-116, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Hayo, Bernd & Méon, Pierre-Guillaume, 2024. "Preaching to the agnostic: Inflation reporting can increase trust in the central bank but only among people with weak priors," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    5. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Jakob de Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2024. "Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 425-457, June.
    6. Hwang, In Do & Lustenberger, Thomas & Rossi, Enzo, 2023. "Central bank communication and public trust: The case of ECB speeches," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    7. Mellina, Sathya & Schmidt, Tobias, 2018. "The role of central bank knowledge and trust for the public's inflation expectations," Discussion Papers 32/2018, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    8. Jean-Marie Dufour & Joachim Wilde, 2018. "Weak identification in probit models with endogenous covariates," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 102(4), pages 611-631, October.
    9. repec:osf:socarx:yrhka_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Brouwer, Nils & de Haan, Jakob, 2022. "The impact of providing information about the ECB’s instruments on inflation expectations and trust in the ECB: Experimental evidence," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    11. Ruttachai Seelajaroen & Pornanong Budsaratragoon & Boonlert Jitmaneeroj, 2020. "Do monetary policy transparency and central bank communication reduce interest rate disagreement?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(3), pages 368-393, April.
    12. Yahya, Farzan & Lee, Chien-Chiang & Chen, Pei-Fen, 2025. "Is central bank resilience vulnerable to climate risks? The role of exchange rate stability and green policies," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    13. Braun, Benjamin, 2016. "Speaking to the people? Money, trust, and central bank legitimacy in the age of quantitative easing," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/12, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    14. Zhang, Jing & Cui, Yinglin & Jin, Yingdan, 2025. "Dynamic interaction between public trust and central bank communication," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 2146-2163.
    15. Baranyai, Eszter & Kolozsi, Pál Péter & Neszveda, Gábor & Lehmann, Kristóf & Banai, Ádám, 2025. "The impact of the green direction in central banking on the general public's trust: Evidence from Hungary," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    16. Aleksandra Gawel & Timo Toikko, 2021. "Trust in European Institutions in Explaining the Entrepreneurship in European Union Countries," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-16, May.
    17. Leek, Lauren Caroline & Bischl, Simeon, 2024. "How Central Bank Independence Shapes Monetary Policy Communication: A Large Language Model Application," SocArXiv yrhka, Center for Open Science.
    18. Meinel, Max-Gerrit, 2023. "Transparenz und organisationale Legitimität: Eine experimentelle Studie am Beispiel eines fiktiven Unternehmens [Transparency and organizational legitimacy: an experimental study based on a fictitious company]," Junior Management Science (JUMS), Junior Management Science e. V., vol. 8(4), pages 926-954.
    19. Hyunwoo Kim, 2023. "Monetary technocracy and democratic accountability: how central bank independence conditions economic voting," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 939-964, May.
    20. Leek, Lauren & Bischl, Simeon, 2025. "How central bank independence shapes monetary policy communication: A Large Language Model application," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:48:y:2016:i:57:p:5625-5638. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.