Today, central banks publicly share a large and ever-increasing amount of information about policy. But policymakers and commentators inside and outside central banks sometimes question whether all of the transparency adds up to effective communication. 14 The FOMC’s famous dot plot is one example.
A focus on the median forecast amounts to emphasizing what the typical FOMC participant would do if things go as expected. But we have been living in times characterized by large, frequent, unexpected changes in the underlying structure of the economy. 15 In this environment, the most  14 A 2016 Brookings conference titled “Understanding Fedspeak” (see https://www.brookings.edu/events/understanding-fedspeak) raised several aspects of this issue.