Producing and revealing inflation forecast is believed to be the best way of implementing a forward-looking monetary policy. The article focuses on inflation forecast targeting (IFT) at the Czech National Bank (CNB) in terms of its efficiency in shaping consumers’ inflation expectations. The goal of the study is to verify the accuracy of the inflation forecasts, and their influence on inflation expectations. The research is divided into four stages. At the first stage, central bank credibility is examined. At the second stage – accuracy of the inflation forecasts. The next step of the research covers a qualitative analysis of IFT implementation. Finally, the existence of the interdependences of inflation forecast, optimal policy paths and inflation expectations is analyzed. Credibility of the central bank, accuracy of the forecast and decision-making procedures focused on the forecast are the premises for the existence of relationship between forecasts and expectations. The research covers the period from July 2002 – till the end of 2013. Its methodology includes qualitative analysis of decision-making of the CNB, quantitative methods (Kia and Patron formula, MAE forecasts errors, quantification of expectations, non-parametric statistics). The results confirm the existence of interdependences between inflation forecasts and expectations of moderate strength. The preconditions of such interdependences are partially fulfilled. The research opens the field for cross-country comparisons and for quantification of IFT implementation.

This study provides an application of dynamic time warping algorithm with a new window constraint to assess consumer expectations’ information content regarding current and future inflation. Our study’s contribution is the novel application of DTW for testing expectations’ forward-lookingness. Additionally, we modify the algorithm to adjust it for a specific question on the information content of our data. The DTW overcomes constraints of the standard tool that examines forward-lookingness: DTW does not impose assumptions on time series properties. In empirical study we cover seven European counties and compare the DTW outcomes with the results of previous studies in these economies using a standard methodology. The research period covers 2001 to mid-2018. Application of DTW provides information on the degree of expectations’ forward-lookingness. The result, after standardization, are similar to the standard parameters of hybrid specification of expectations. Moreover, the rankings of most forward-looking consumers are replicated. Our results confirm the economic intuition, and they do not contradict previous studies.

Research background: Most of the modern central banks (CBs) acknowledge the role of economic agents’ expectations in monetary policy. To shape these expectations and to over-come the lags occurrence, CBs produce and reveal macroeconomic forecast and declare that it is the input into their deliberations and monetary policy adjustments. This is how central banks implement inflation forecast targeting. The formal assessments of actual forecast importance in central banks’ decisions is not presented in the literature — to the best author’s knowledge.Purpose of the article: The paper is of methodological nature. It presents the index that compares inflation forecast importance in the central banks decisions. The elaboration of such index is the main goal of the paper. The index is tested empirically for Czechia and Sweden.Methods: Comparably to other research presenting the tools that approximate some qualitative variables, the methodological part of the paper offers the description of the factors covered by the index with their justification and point attribution. The index is suitable to assess CBs decision’s accordance with the forecast produced under constant rate assumption as well as under endogenous interest rates. It is designed to cover low quality data as the time series on the central path of the forecast are not always accessible. In this cases only the relation of the forecast to the inflation target is revealed on the fan charts.Findings & Value added: The index elaboration and its calculation for Czechia and Sweden is presented in the paper. It thus contributes to the literature on ex post assessment of the central bank’s actions. This formalized assessment opens the field for making further con-clusions on inflation forecast targeting implementations and possible impact of the forecast on the economic agents' expectations.

Research background: The previous studies on monetary policy transparency suggest that the dependence between the degree of transparency and monetary policy effectiveness exists. In this examination, we tackle this issue for the most recent sample with the application of novel transparency measure, which is de-signed to cover forward-looking policy approach. Purpose of the article: We aim at evaluating forward-looking transparency of the European central banks and juxtapose it with their effectiveness in achieving monetary policy goals: price stability and output stabilization. The sample covers the central banks of the following countries: Sweden, the UK, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. We also search for the patters of similarity in our sample. Methods: We apply a novel, index-based transparency measure to assess central banks’ transparency. We also estimate inflation gap and the output gap. The methods used are based on data and statistical analysis. The comparison of the behaviour of individual central banks is carried out for the variables measuring transparency and inflation and output gaps. The similarity of the performance of individual central banks is assessed with the use of measures of the distance between objects, including our own measure. Findings & Value added: Our results suggest the existence of different degrees of similarity in the sample, but some common tendencies can be found as well. For example, central banks with comparable transparency degree are found more similar. Novelty of the examination is related to our methodology: transparency and similarity measures applied and the most recent time span covered.

Research background: This study investigates central banks? (CB) intentions as reflected in their minutes and their relationship with policy decisions. Although CB communication is an inherent part of their inflation targeting (IT) strategy, their communication does not necessarily result in actions.  Purpose of the article: This study aims to extract policy intentions from central bank minutes and juxtapose these with actual policy decisions to investigate the consistency of their words and deeds in a comparative context. Additionally, we compare the applicability of three dictionaries in policy communication assessments. Methods: Computational linguistics and textual methods are applied to create proxies for tone from a large dataset of texts. A transformation of words into time series involves the application of a general economic dictionary and two monetary policy-adjusted dictionaries. We examine the association between tone and actual CB decisions with the eta squared coefficient. The research covers 15 European CBs, divided into three subgroups according to the CB experience in inflation targeting. The sample starting points differ as they relate to each country?s IT implementation year; the analysis ends in mid-2019. Findings & value added: This paper?s value added is firstly methodological, as we test three dictionaries to determine their usefulness. Statistical and qualitative analysis allows us to conclude about superiority of monetary policy specific lexicons for this kind of studies. The extra value added is about the study?s coverage: it covers a large sample and provides a broader illustration compared to most previous examinations. Our results suggest that a relationship exists between communications and actions, although the weakest for late joiners to IT. The latter group of CBs needs to strengthen communication practices. In experienced inflation targeters the short run dimension of credibility exists and opens the room for creating effective monetary policy in terms of managing the expectations of a general audience.