Skip to:
  1. Main navigation
  2. Main content
  3. Footer
Economic Commentary

FOMC Communications and the Predictability of Near-Term Policy Decisions

Download pdf

In February 1994, the FOMC began a new era in transparency, gradually building a communications apparatus that conveys information about the Committee’s decisions and expectations. Has the new apparatus improved the public’s ability to predict FOMC interest rate decisions? New research based on the prices of fed funds futures shows that over the past decade, it has, especially over horizons of two to three months.

06.01.2006ISSN 2163-3738 EC 6/1/2006

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Carlson, John B., Ben R. Craig, Patrick Higgins, and William Melick. 2006. “FOMC Communications and the Predictability of Near-Term Policy Decisions.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 6/1/2006.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International