This paper examines whether central bank communication stabilises euro area inflation expectations through the information and news channel. A novelty of the study is its use of data from Google Analytics on ECB website traffic as proxy for visitors’ attention to its communication. We conduct several econometric tests with daily data to measure the impact of ECB communication on the information demand of the public and ultimately on inflation expectations. Overall, this study shows that website attention, as captured by search volumes of visitors, influences euro area inflation expectations. We find that increased website attention contributes to narrowing the gap between market-based forecasts and (the mean of) longer-term professional inflation expectations. Our findings add to the theoretical evidence on the existence of an information and news channel.

中文翻译：

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央行沟通能否有助于稳定通胀预期？

本文考察央行沟通是否通过信息和新闻渠道稳定欧元区通胀预期。该研究的一个新颖之处在于它使用来自谷歌分析的欧洲央行网站流量数据作为访客对其交流注意力的代理。我们使用每日数据进行多项计量经济学测试，以衡量欧洲央行沟通对公众信息需求以及最终对通胀预期的影响。总体而言，这项研究表明，由访问者搜索量捕获的网站关注度会影响欧元区通胀预期。我们发现，网站关注度的增加有助于缩小基于市场的预测与长期专业通胀预期（的平均值）之间的差距。