摘要:Several central bankers have expressed concern that providing forecasts of
future policy rates may impair financial-market functioning.We look for evidence
of such impairment by examining the behavior of financial markets in the United
States, the euro area, and New Zealand in light of the communication strategies
of the central banks. While we find evidence that central bank policy rate
forecasts influence market prices in New Zealand, we find no evidence that
market participants in the three regions systematically overweight policy rate
guidance or that they do not appreciate the uncertainty and conditionality of
it. The results suggest that the risk of impairing market functioning is not a
strong argument against central banks’ provision of policy rate guidance or
forecasts.