McKeown, J and Paterson, L (2014), ‘Enhancing the transparency of the Bank of England’s Inflation Report’, article on VoxEU. Monetary Policy Committee (2013), ‘Monetary policy trade-offs and forward guidance’, available at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/inflationreport/2013/ir13augforwardguidance.pdf Morris, H and Shin, S (2002), ‘Social value of public information’, American Economic Review, Vol. 92, No. 5, p. 1521-1534. Nyman, R, Gregory, D, Kapadia, S, Ormerod, P, Tuckett, D and Smith, R (2016), ‘News and narratives in financial systems: exploiting big data for systemic risk assessment’, mimeo. O'Neill, O (2002), ‘A Question of Trust’, BBC Reith Lectures. O’Neill, O (2014), ‘Trust, Trustworthiness, and Accountability’, in Morris, N and Vines, D (ed. ): Capital Failure: Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services. Praet, P (2017), ‘Have unconventional policies overstretched central bank independence? Challenges for accountability and transparency in the wake of the crisis’, speech. Plosser, C (2011), ‘Toward Clarity in Monetary Policy’, available at www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/annual-report/2011/toward-clarity-in-monetary-policy Ranaldo, A and Rossi, E (2010), ‘The reaction of asset markets to Swiss National Bank communication, Journal of International Money and Finance, Vol. 29, No. 3, p. 489-503. Reis, R (2013), ‘Central Bank Design’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 27, No. 4, p. 17-44. Roy, H, Pocock, M, Preston, C, Roy, D, Savage, J, Tweddle, J, Robinson, L (2012), ‘Understanding Citizen Science & Environmental Monitoring. Final Report on behalf of UK Environmental Observation Framework’. 41  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  41  Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016), Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2016.
Beige Book summaries reach fewer than 10% of the US adult population. FOMC minutes are accessible to only around 2%. 60  Kincaid et al (1975). The precise algorithm used will have some bearing on the final Flesch-Kincaid score that is computed for a given text. Other metrics of linguistic complexity yield broadly similar results. 61 Kirsch et al (1993). 16  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  16  According to OECD studies, levels of literacy in the UK and US are not greatly dissimilar. 62  Assuming the  same literacy rate in the UK and US implies that political speeches are accessible to slightly less than half the population, Dickens novels to around 40% and newspapers to around 30%. Bank of England publications are accessible to less than 10% of the adult population. These fractions are low. Around 95% of the general public are likely to find central bank publications inaccessible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these tend to be the same segments of society with least trust and understanding of central banks – for example, the young and less well-off. Mainstream media can help mediate, but they have an increasingly constrained reach among those same cohorts. Herein lies central banks’ challenge: a rising tide of central bank communications on the one hand, a retreating tide of public trust and understanding on the other. Conventional means of communicating are unlikely to be able to reach those parts of society for whom mistrust and misunderstanding are most acute.