This dissertation attempts to analyze the impact of transparency and credibility of central banks on financial markets. While the topic of central bank's transparency has been extensively elaborated in literature, the linkage between institutional framework and empirical characteristics of transparency and credibility have not been adequately described. The study aims to overcome this absence and try to quantify transparency and credibility of central banks, as well as to analyze the relationship between them and their effect on interest rates and inflation expectations. The analysis is performed for nine major central banks: the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Bank of Canada, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Sveriges Riksbank, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of England, and the U.S. Federal Reserve, and three central and eastern European central banks--the National Bank of Poland, the Hungarian National Bank and the Czech National Bank (CNB). The transparency index, based on survey, is constructed for all twelve central banks mentioned above, while measures of transparency and credibility that are derived from financial market instruments are performed only for the ECB, Fed and the CNB. Finally, we analyze the impact of transparency and credibility of the CNB on interest rates and inflation expectations. The analysis shows that central bank transparency has improved substantially in the last decade. The most transparent central banks in our sample are the Sveriges Riksbank and the Czech National Bank, followed by the Bank of England. A range of communication channels that improve the transparency of monetary policy, however, have little impact on central bank credibility. It is primarily policy-makers' verbal comments, monetary policy implementation and clarity that affect the predictability of monetary policy and contribute most to increasing its credibility. Therefore, the main reason of low credibility is confusing communication, which cannot be eliminated even by maximum openness of the central bank. The additional study of the Czech National Bank showed that during the European debt crisis, greater credibility of the CNB reduced the uncertainty in financial market and contributed to efficient formation of private agents' inflation expectations. Moreover, the results of the analysis show that inflation expectations in the Czech Republic are formed rationally, i.e. they are based on the CNB inflation forecast rather than on the actual values of inflation.

1 Abstract The thesis constructs the indices of independence, transparency and accountability of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) and European Central Bank (ECB). The results for the NBG are compared with the ECB and policy recommendations for the NBG based on ECB practice are suggested. The results of the analyses show that the ECB has achieved almost full independence and transparency in conducting the monetary policy but there are less favorable results in case of accountability. The NBG, even though revealed a gradual increase in its independence, transparency and accountability since 1998, still needs to put more effort into improving its autonomy, communication practices and responsibility.

This thesis examines the central banking transparency and financial stability communication. The main goal is to find the determinants of the updated Monetary policy transparency index and the index for financial stability trans- parency, which cover 110 countries during the period 2000-2011. We analyse the individual components of transparencies and perform regression models with the set of economic and political variables in order to find drivers of all aspects of transparency. As a basic observation we verified the increasing trend in both types of transparencies during last two decades. We found out that economi- cally well developed countries with flexible exchange rates, quality government and stable political institutions tend to be more open about their monetary policies. Moreover, high degree of monetary policy transparency and the occu- rance of past systemic banking crisis implies higher openness of central banks about financial stability issues. The drivers of Financial stability transparency index components display significant variations, especially variables like rule of law or past financial distress. It is concluded that financial stability trans- parency is still a young field of study and many central banks are still in the developing phase of learning. Keywords central banking,...

The thesis studies the determinants of trust in the European Central Bank by employing various indicators. The main objective has been to assess the most significant determinants of trust and to study the impact of the Great Crisis on trust in the European Central Bank. First, the socio-demographic and macroeconomic variables have been studied as the predictors and socio-demographic ones have been confirmed to be more significant. We have also extended the regressions by two new variables: monetary policy transparency index and financial stability transparency index. Whereas the monetary policy transparency index has not been significantly correlated with trust, it has been proved that the financial stability transparency index has positive impact on the trust in the European Central Bank. Secondly, we have employed the bias-reduced linearization procedure for computation of the standard errors in order to account for clustering and serial correlation problems. After comparison with the robust standard errors, we have concluded that the robust standard errors are not able to completely deal with the clusters and serial correlation in data. Thirdly, it has been proved that the trust in the European Central Bank decreases during the crisis occurrence.

中央銀行政策透明度影響總體經濟的議題在近日漸受重視。以美國為例，2008年房貸嚴重違約，高順位債權受到波及，使多數金融業產生營運危機，讓聯邦準備銀行 (Fed) 政策執行受到關注。晚近貨幣當局的政策透明度漸受重視。貨幣政策應如何選定才能使總體經濟達到較高的社會福利？Cukierman在2002年指出中央銀行的透明度低易造成較高的物價膨脹。本研究以動態一般性均衡模型 (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) ，建構新凱因斯小型開放總體模型。模型內含一定程度的價格僵固，並且擁有前瞻預期 (forward looking) 及後顧預期 (backward looking) 兩種型態的廠商存在其中。再採用貝氏方法估計台灣在該模型所應採用的參數後，並嘗試對體系內多個部門投入衝擊，然後檢視央行的政策透明度對總體經濟的影響，同時驗證是否支持Cukierman的結論。本研究印證Cukierman的結論，發現央行在操作貨幣政策面臨兩難時，不應採取透明度低的政策法則，而應優先針對物價的不穩定做出因應對策。 / Recently, people pay attention to central bank’s policy transparency, and most countries’ central banks have accepted the suggestion made by the Bank for International Settlements to adopt transparent monetary policy. Cukierman (2002) concluded that if the central bank’s policy was not transparency, it would cause higher inflation. The thesis will utilizes dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with New Keynesian concept proposed by Gali and Monacelli (2005) to analyze the effects of transparent monetary policy and to classify the macroeconomic different effects between transparent and hazy monetary policy. The conclusions support that higher monetary policy transparency will reduce social welfare loss, lower the volatility of inflation and output gap.