Charles Wyplosz interview

CEPR Chief Executive Officer, Hilary Beech, interviews monetary economist Charles Wyplosz and co-author of the ICMB/CEPR Report ‘How do central banks write?’. This Report provides an evaluation of Inflation Reports published by inflation-targeting Central Banks.

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The questions:
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1. This Report focuses on a specific component of the written communication strategy of inflation-targeting central banks. Can you tell us what is in an Inflation Report and why it is important?

2. What are the most typical contents of an Inflation Report?

3. In the study you examine Inflation Reports put out by inflation-targeting central banks, why is this of interest?

4. In this Report you focused explicitly on inflation-targeting central banks, can you tell us some more about the banks that were included in the sample?

5. And the goal was to analyze these Inflation Reports and find out what makes the best practises?

6. What did you find in your study? What do inflation-targeting central banks do well in their Inflation Reports? What do they do less well? Where is there room for improvement?

7. Would you argue for greater transparency and for more central banks to work towards more of that?

8. Can you say if there is any causality between central bank’s publishing good Inflation Reports and central bank transparency?

9. Which central banks were rated highly in your study?

10. And the Federal Reserve and the ECB were not included in your study?

11. Given that the Inflation Report is just one part of the overall communication strategy of inflation-targeting central banks, is this a fair set of results or should we be looking more holistically at the overall communication strategy of inflation-targeting central banks?

12. Does the fact that the release dates for Inflation Reports do not coincide neatly with the timing of monetary policy decisions pose a problem?

13. Another question is about forecasts, there are some issues regarding assumptions that are made about variables such as future interest rates or exchange rates that are themselves related to monetary policy decisions. What is your advice to central banks in that regard?

14. What is the single most important area that you think central banks should be focusing on if they want to improve the quality of their Inflation Report?

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