Forward Guidance

Lars Svensson

No 10669, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Forward guidance about future policy settings, in the form of a published policy-rate path, has for many years been a natural part of normal monetary policy for several central banks, including the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the Swedish Riksbank. More recently, the Federal Reserve has started to publish FOMC participants? policy-rate projections. The Swedish, New Zealand, and U.S. experience of a published policy-rate path is examined, especially to what extent the market has anticipated the path (the predictability of the path) and to what extent market expectations line up with the path after publication (the credibility of the path). The recent Swedish experience is quite dramatic. In particular, it shows a case with a large discrepancy between a high and rising Riksbank path and a low and falling market path, with the market path providing a good forecast of the future policy rate. The discrepancy is explained by the Riksbank?s leaning against the wind in recent years and related circumstances. The New Zealand experience is less dramatic, but shows cases where the market implements either a substantially tighter or easier policy than intended by the RBNZ. There are also cases of the market being ahead of the RBNZ and the RBNZ later following the market. The U.S. experience includes a recent case of the market expecting and implementing substantially easier policy consistent with the FOMC projections, the possible explanation of which has been much discussed.

Keywords: Monetary policy; Forward guidance; Leaning against the wind; Policy rate path (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 E58 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10669 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Forward Guidance (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10669

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10669

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().