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Communicational bias in monetary policy: can words forecast deeds?

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  • Pincheira, Pablo
  • Calani, Mauricio

Abstract

Communication with the public is an ever-growing practice among central banks and complements their decisions of interest rate setting. In this paper we examine one feature of the communicational practice of the Central Bank of Chile which summarizes the assessment of the Board about the most likely future of monetary policy. We show that this assessment, which is called communicational bias or simply c-bias, contains valuable information regarding the future stance of monetary policy. We do this by comparing, against several benchmarks, the c-bias ability to correctly forecast the direction of monetary policy rates. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Central Bank of Chile has (in our sample period) matched words and deeds. In fact, the c-bias is a more accurate predictor than two versions of random walks and than a uniformly-distributed random variable. It also outperforms, at some horizons, the predictive ability of a discrete Taylor-rule-type model that uses persistence, output gap and inflation-deviation-from-target as arguments. Furthermore, the c-bias is more accurate than survey-based forecasts at several forecasting horizons. We also show that the c-bias can provide information to improve monetary policy rate forecasts based on the forward rate curve.
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  • Pincheira, Pablo & Calani, Mauricio, 2010. "Communicational bias in monetary policy: can words forecast deeds?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123267, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:123267
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    Cited by:

    1. González, Mario & Tadle, Raul Cruz, 2020. "Signaling and financial market impact of chile’s central bank communication: a content analysis approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123054, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Lin, Jianhao & Mei, Ziwei & Chen, Liangyuan & Zhu, Chuanqi, 2023. "Is the People's Bank of China consistent in words and deeds?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Mario González & Raúl Tadle, 2018. "Monetary Policy Effects on the Chilean Stock Market: An Automated Content Approach," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 817, Central Bank of Chile.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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