摘要：In a world characterized by noisy information and conflicting signals, no
central bank is able to affect private-sector expectations at all times. In
order to evaluate the effectiveness of any central bank communication strategy,
it is important to know what private agents rely on when they form expectations.
We model monetary policy as an information game in which individuals form their
expectations based on all the information that is available to them (public and
private) and are, therefore, subject to the noise that characterizes that
information. Individual agents also know that inflation is ultimately affected
both by central bank policies and by the average expectation formed by all
agents. The way individuals interpret these two components to form their
expectations is explained in the context of a higher-order expectations setup
and is central to our argument. We then apply Bacharach's (1993)
variable-universe methodology to provide a framework for assessing everyone’s
interpretations. Therefore, our contribution is, first, to describe monetary
policy as an information game in which interpretations matter and, second, to
provide a way of solving for these interpretations. We show that a monetary
policy regime that has explicit quantitative objectives may provide individuals
with better anchors for coordinating their expectations. However, that is only
true either if no great shocks are anticipated or if all other public
information is very unclear, leaving the inflation target as the only clear
piece of information available. We derive the conditions under which this is
true.
