Do Central Banks Respond Timely to Developments in the Global Economy?

Abstract

Our analysis suggests; they do not! We arrive at this conclusion by showing that revisions to the published interest rate path projections from the central banks in New Zealand, Norway and Sweden can be predicted by timely and forward‐looking international indicators. Furthermore, using individual country and Panel VARs, identified with an external instrument method, we show that the policy surprises induced by the predictable revisions likely contain information about how the central banks assess past, current and future economic conditions and thereby leads to a positive co‐movement between the interest rate and both financial markets and the macroeconomy.