Czech Rep. – Central bank publishes quarterly review of central bank monetary policy in 9 jurisdictions, with special article examining methods used to measure inflation expectations

On 9 December 2013 the Monetary and Statistics Department of the Czech National Bank (Česká národní banka) published the latest issue of its quarterly review of central banks’ monetary policy (čtvrtletník Monitoring centrálních bank), in both Czech and English.

The bulletin covers developments in monetary policy and inflation in nine jurisdictions whose central banks use inflation targeting as the cornerstone of their monetary policy: EU (ECB), USA, UK, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Switzerland, and New Zealand.

For each jurisdiction the bulletin indicates the central bank’s inflation target, the dates of recent monetary policy meetings and any changes in policy rates, the most recent inflation figures, the dates of upcoming monetary policy meetings, the dates of upcoming publications, a prediction of the direction of upcoming movements in the policy rate, and a 12-month graph of the key policy rate and the inflation rate.

This issue features an original four-page article entitled, “Inflation Expectations.”  After a brief introductory discussion of the effects of inflation expectations on price levels and the need for central banks to measure such expectations, the article gives a quick overview of the measurement methods used in the USA, the EU, and Japan, and provides a handy table summarizing recent measurements of inflation expectations in 9 jurisdictions.

The 11-page bulletin closes with a 1-page summary of a speech given on 17 October 2013 by Peter Praet, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the ECB Conference on Household Finance and Consumption held in Frankfurt am Main.  The speech, entitled “Household heterogeneity and the transmission mechanism”, discussed the influence of household-income disparity on the success of monetary policy in the eurozone, pointing out that wealthier households have more liquid assets with which they can smooth out their consumption between good times and bad, and poorer households react more quickly to monetary policy measures such as modification of interest rates.

Sources:

ČNB review in English: Central bank monitoring - December 2013 (pdf, 222 kB) (2013-12-09 12:06:57)

ČNB review in Czech: Monitoring centrálních bank - prosinec 2013 (pdf, 356 kB) (2013-12-09 11:58:08)

Peter Praet speech in its entirety: Household heterogeneity and the transmission mechanism (2013-10-17)