From actual to perceived transparency: The case of the European Central Bank

Carin Cruijsen and Sylvester Eijffinger

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2010, vol. 31, issue 3, 388-399

Abstract: Over the last decades central banks have become much more transparent about their monetary policy making process. In the literature, the increase in central bank transparency has frequently been related to (changes in) the actions of economic actors. However, the fact that these actors might not even be aware of the increased transparency or might not perceive the central bank as any more credible or transparent as a result of it is neglected in the literature. By analyzing data of a Dutch household survey on the (perceived) transparency of the European Central Bank (ECB) we delve into those neglected issues. We find that transparency perceptions matter for inflation perceptions and expectations as well as for trust in the ECB. However, we also show that the link between actual and perceived transparency is weak. Not only because of poor transparency knowledge but also because perceived transparency is influenced by many individual and psychological characteristics.

Keywords: Perceptions; Central; bank; transparency; Questionnaire; Household; behavior; Behavioral; economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-4870(10)00014-0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:joepsy:v:31:y:2010:i:3:p:388-399

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().