Clarity of Central Bank Communication About Inflation

ByAleš Bulíř, David-Jan Jansen, Martin Cihak

January 1, 2012

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

This paper examines whether the clarity of central bank communication about inflation has changed with the economic environment. We use readability statistics and content analysis to study the clarity of communication on the inflation outlook by seven central banks between 1997 and 2010. Overall, we find no strong indications that central banks were less clear in explaining their policies when faced with higher uncertainty or a less favorable inflation outlook. The global financial crisis, however, did have a negative impact on clarity of central bank communication.

Subject: Banking, Communications in revenue administration, Financial crises, Global financial crisis of 2008-2009, Inflation, Inflation targeting, Monetary policy, Prices, Revenue administration

Keywords: central bank communication, clarity, communication, communication clarity, Communications in revenue administration, contemporaneous inflation gap, Global, Global financial crisis of 2008-2009, inflation, inflation expectation, inflation factor, inflation outlook, inflation report, Inflation targeting, monetary policy, transparency, WP

Pages:
24
Volume:
2012
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5089/9781463931148.001
Issue:
009
Series:
Working Paper No. 2012/009
Stock No:
WPIEA2012009
ISBN:
9781463931148
ISSN:
1018-5941

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