IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Does Central Bank Transparency Reduce Interest Rates?

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Petra M. Geraats
  • Sylvester C.W. Eijffinger
  • Carin A.B. van der Cruijsen

Abstract

Central banks have become increasingly transparent during the last decade. One of the main benefits of transparency predicted by theoreticalmodels is that it enhances the credibility, reputation, and flexibility of monetary policy, which suggests that increased transparency should result in lower nominal interest rates. This paper exploits a detailed transparency data set to investigate this relationship for eight major central banks. It appears that for all central banks, the level of interest rates is affected by the degree of central bank transparency. In particular, the majority of the improvements in transparency are associated with significant effects on interest rates, controlling for economic conditions. In most of these cases, interest rates are lower, often by around 50 basis points, although in some instances transparency appears to have had a detrimental e¤ect on interest rates.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: https://www.dnb.nl/binaries/Working%20Paper%2085_tcm46-146742.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department in its series DNB Working Papers with number 085.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: Feb 2006
Handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:085
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Postbus 98, 1000 AB Amsterdam

Web page: http://www.dnb.nl/en/

More information through EDIRC

Keywords: central bank transparency; monetary policy; interest rates.;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by 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

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:

as
in new window


  1. Courtenay, Roger & Clare, Andrew, 2001. "What can we learn about monetary policy transparency from financial market data?," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2001,06, Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Centre.
  2. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Geraats, Petra M., 2006. "How transparent are central banks?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-21, March.
  3. Muller, P. & M. Zelmer, 1999. "Greater Transparency in Monetary Policy: Impact on Financial Markets," Technical Reports 86, Bank of Canada.
  4. Georgios Chortareas & David Stasavage & Gabriel Sterne, 2002. "Does it pay to be transparent? international evidence form central bank forecasts," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jul, pages 99-118.
  5. Cukierman, A., 2000. "Accountability, Credibility, Transparency and Stabilization Policy in the Eurosystem," Papers 2000-4, Tel Aviv.
  6. Siklos, Pierre L., 2000. "Monetary policy transparency, public commentary, and market perceptions about monetary policy in Canada," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2000,08, Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Centre.
  7. Jensen, Henrik, 2002. " Optimal Degrees of Transparency in Monetary Policymaking," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 104(3), pages 399-422, September.
  8. Rachel Reeves & Michael Sawicki, 2005. "Do financial markets react to Bank of England communication?," Discussion Papers 15, Monetary Policy Committee Unit, Bank of England.
  9. Geraats, Petra M., 2000. "Why Adopt Transparency? The Publication of Central Bank Forecasts," Center for International and Development Economics Research, Working Paper Series qt0hw7h7cp, Center for International and Development Economics Research, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  10. Andrew G Haldane & Vicky Read, 2000. "Monetary policy surprises and the yield curve," Bank of England working papers 106, Bank of England.
  11. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
  12. Hendry, David F., 1995. "Dynamic Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198283164, April.
  13. Jonathan Coppel & Ellis Connolly, 2003. "What Do Financial Market Data Tell Us about Monetary Policy Transparency?," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2003-05, Reserve Bank of Australia.
  14. Matthew Rafferty & Marc Tomljanovich, 2002. "Central bank transparency and market efficiency: An econometric analysis," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 26(2), pages 150-161, June.
  15. William Poole & Robert H. Rasche, 2003. "The impact of changes in FOMC disclosure practices on the transparency of monetary policy: are markets and the FOMC better "synched"?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 1-10.
  16. Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi & Daniel Gros, 2001. "Is the ECB Sufficiently Accountable and Transparent?," Economics Working Papers 007, European Network of Economic Policy Research Institutes.
  17. Petra Gerlach-Kristen, 2004. "Is the MPC's Voting Record Informative about Future UK Monetary Policy?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(2), pages 299-313, 06.
  18. Engle, Robert F, 1982. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of the Variance of United Kingdom Inflation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 987-1007, July.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:085. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Rob Vet)

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.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.