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Information acquisition, dissemination, and transparency of monetary policy

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  • Jacob Wong

Abstract

. This paper examines the role of transparency in a benevolent monetary authority's policies. Each firm's payoff depends on unobservable macroeconomic conditions and firms may incur a cost to acquire private information about macroeconomic conditions. The policy authority attempts to infer the underlying macroeconomic conditions from a noisy measure of aggregate actions and makes a public announcement to inform firms of this inference. High‐quality announcements provide firms the incentive not to gather private information and base actions solely on information contained in policy announcements. However, this makes the observed actions of firms less informative to the policy authority. Ce mémoire examine le rle de la transparence dans les politiques d'une autorité monétaire bienveillante. Les résultats financiers de chaque entreprise dépendent de conditions macroéconomiques qui ne sont pas observables et les entreprises peuvent avoir à encourir des cots pour acquérir ces renseignements. L'autorité monétaire essaie d'extraire ce que sont les conditions macroéconomiques de base à partir d'une mesure agrégée des activités, et en fait l'annonce pour informer les entreprises. La grande qualité de telles annonces incite les entreprises à ne pas essayer de se procurer de tels renseignements privément, ce qui fait qu'elles fondent leurs décisions seulement sur les renseignements annoncés par l'autorité monétaire. Voilà qui rend l'observation du comportement des entreprises bien moins riche en information pour l'autorité monétaire.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacob Wong, 2008. "Information acquisition, dissemination, and transparency of monetary policy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(1), pages 46-79, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:canjec:v:41:y:2008:i:1:p:46-79
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.00455.x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ui, Takashi, 2014. "The social value of public information with convex costs of information acquisition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 249-252.
    2. Ryan Chahrour, 2014. "Public Communication and Information Acquisition," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 73-101, July.
    3. Takashi Ui, 2022. "Impacts of Public Information on Flexible Information Acquisition," Papers 2204.09250, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    4. Gianluca Femminis & Giulio Piccirilli, 2020. "Public information, education and welfare," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(1), pages 137-166, April.
    5. Takashi Ui, 2022. "Optimal and Robust Disclosure of Public Information," Papers 2203.16809, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    6. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2012. "Heterogeneous information quality; strategic complementarities and optimal policy design," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(3), pages 342-352.
    7. Sweder van Wijnbergen & Tim Willems, 2013. "Imperfect information, lagged labour adjustment, and the Great Moderation," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 65(2), pages 219-239, April.
    8. Amihai Glazer, 2008. "Crowding Out Wasteful Activities by Wasteful Activities," Working Papers 080908, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    9. Takashi Ui, 2022. "Optimal and Robust Disclosure of Public Information," Working Papers on Central Bank Communication 039, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.

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    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

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