Financial markets and the public at large must have a good understanding of the systematic and conditional conduct of monetary policy, so that expectations about future price developments and the path of policy rates remain in line with the central bank’s mandate. For these reasons, the ECB has striven to be  19  R.M.
Edge, T. Laubach and J. Williams (2007), “Learning and shifts in long-run productivity growth,” Journal of Monetary Economics, forthcoming.