Central Bank's Action and Communication

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the welfare effect of public information. In an environment characterized by imperfect common knowledge and strategic complementarities, Morris and Shin (2002)argue that noisy public information may be detrimental to welfare because public information is attributed too large a weight relative to its face value since it serves as a focal point. While this argument has received a great deal of attention in central banks and in the financial press, it considers communication as the sole task of a central bank and ignores that communication usually goes with a policy action. This paper accounts for the action task of a central bank and analyzes whether public disclosure is beneficial in the conduct of monetary policy when the central bank primarily tries to stabilize the economy with an instrument that is optimal with respect to its perhaps mistaken view. In this context, it turns out that transparency is particularly beneficial when central bank’s information is poorly accurate because it helps reducing the distortion associated with badly suited policies

Central Bank's Action and Communication

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the welfare effect of public information. In an environment characterized by imperfect common knowledge and strategic complementarities, Morris and Shin (2002)argue that noisy public information may be detrimental to welfare because public information is attributed too large a weight relative to its face value since it serves as a focal point. While this argument has received a great deal of attention in central banks and in the financial press, it considers communication as the sole task of a central bank and ignores that communication usually goes with a policy action. This paper accounts for the action task of a central bank and analyzes whether public disclosure is beneficial in the conduct of monetary policy when the central bank primarily tries to stabilize the economy with an instrument that is optimal with respect to its perhaps mistaken view. In this context, it turns out that transparency is particularly beneficial when central bank’s information is poorly accurate because it helps reducing the distortion associated with badly suited policies.differential information; monetary policy; transparency

Can Opacity of a Credible Central Bank Explain Excessive Inflation?

Excessive inflation is usually attributed to the lack of central bank’s credibility. In this context, most of the literature considers transparency a means to establish central bank’s credibility. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it shows that, even in the absence of inflationary bias, a credible central bank may find it optimal to implement an accommodating monetary policy in response to cost-push shocks whenever the uncertainty surrounding its monetary instrument is high. Indeed, the degree of central bank’s transparency influences the effectiveness of its policy to stabilize inflation in terms of output gap, and thereby whether it will implement an expansionary or contractionary policy in response to cost-push shocks. Second, it stresses that transparency is not just a means to achieve credibility but is essential per se for the optimality of monetary policy of a fully credible central bank

The signaling role of policy action.

This paper analyzes the conduct of the optimal monetary policy with imperfect information on the shocks hitting the economy where firms’ prices are strategic complements. Monetary policy entails a dual stabilizing role, as a policy response that influences directly the economy and as a vehicle for information that shapes firms’ beliefs. In the case where more information is welfare detrimental, the central bank faces a dilemma, for its monetary instrument aimed at stabilizing the economy may harmfully shape firms’ beliefs. Recognizing the signaling role of its instrument, the central bank finds it optimal to distort its policy response in order to mitigate the detrimental information that it may convey.differential information, monetary policy, transparency.

Can Opacity of a Credible Central Bank Explain Excessive Inflation?

Excessive inflation is usually attributed to the lack of central bank’s credibility. In this context, most of the literature considers transparency a means to establish central bank’s credibility. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it shows that, even in the absence of inflationary bias, a credible central bank may find it optimal to implement an accommodating monetary policy in response to cost-push shocks whenever the uncertainty surrounding its monetary instrument is high. Indeed, the degree of central bank’s transparency influences the effectiveness of its policy to stabilize inflation in terms of output gap, and thereby whether it will implement an expansionary or contractionary policy in response to cost-push shocks. Second, it stresses that transparency is not just a means to achieve credibility but is essential per se for the optimality of monetary policy of a fully credible central bank.monetary policy; differential information; transparency; cost-push shocks

Intertemporal discoordination in the 100 percent reserve banking system

The 100%-Money Plan advocated by Fisher (1936) has a Misesian flavor as it aims at mitigating intertemporal discoordination by reducing (i) the discrepancy between investment and voluntary savings, and (ii) the manipulation of interest rates by monetary injections. Recent proposals to adopt the 100 percent reserve banking system, such as the Chicago Plan Revisited by Benes and Kumhof (2013) or the Limited Purpose Banking by Kotlikoff (2010), take, however, a fundamentally different attitude towards the role of the central bank in the credit market and ignore that intertemporal discoordination arises independently from whether the credit expansion is financed by the creation of outside or inside money. These plans allow the central bank to inject outside money into the credit market and to effectively lower interest rates in negative territory in order to overcome the limit that the liquidity trap sets to credit expansion in the fractional reserve system. Although such an attempt may succeed in stimulating the economy in the short run, it exacerbates intertemporal discoordination and weakens economic stability in the long run

Reducing overreaction to central banks' disclosures : theory and experiment

Financial markets are known for overreacting to public information. Central banks can reduce this overreaction either by disclosing information to a fraction of market participants only (partial publicity) or by disclosing information to all participants but with ambiguity (partial transparency). We show that, in theory, both communication strategies are strictly equivalent in the sense that overreaction can be indi-erently mitigated by reducing the degree of publicity or by reducing the degree of transparency. We run a laboratory experiment to test whether theoretical predictions hold in a game played by human beings. In line with theory, the experiment does not allow the formulation of a clear preference in favor of either communication strategy. This paper, however, makes a case for partial transparency rather than partial publicity because the latter seems increasingly diffcult to implement in the present information age and is associated with discrimination as well as fairness issues.heterogeneous information; public information; overreaction; transparency; coordination; experiment

Transparence et Efficacité de la Politique Monétaire.

Cet article analyse les effets de la transparence économique sur l’efficacité de la politique monétaire dans un modèle de concurrence monopolistique en connaissance commune imparfaite sur les chocs de demande affectant une économie sans biais inflationniste. Nous montrons que la transparence est optimale lorsque l’économie est affectée par des chocs de demande que la banque centrale tente de neutraliser, tant que cette dernière n’est pas trop orientée en faveur de la stabilisation du produit.information, politique monétaire, transparence.