ECB visitors – can direct communication alter inflation expectations

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ECB visitors - can direct communication alter inflation expectations?

16 September 2025

By Alexander Jung, Francesco Paolo Mongelli and Christian Scherf

More than 20,000 members of the public visit the ECB every year. Central banks are known for communicating well with bankers and market experts but struggling to reach the broader public. So, these visits are a great opportunity for us to learn more about what's on people's minds. For central banks, inflation expectations - how people assume prices to develop in the future - are an especially interesting aspect of public opinion as they matter for the transmission of monetary policy.

That is why we carried out a field experiment with 5,000 non-expert visitors to the ECB. We tested whether knowledge transfer through direct communication helps to align people's inflation expectations with the ECB's inflation target. We find that it does. Lectures provided for visitors help to better anchor non-experts' inflation expectations, mainly because they improve their understanding of monetary policy and inflation dynamics.

Why does communication with the public matter?

Central banks must convey their policies clearly to ensure that their messages are understood by everyone. According to the ECB's Knowledge & Attitudes Survey most people in the euro area trust the ECB, although many are unsure about its primary objective. The ECB's 2025 strategy assessment highlights that the adoption of a numerical 2% inflation target in 2021 has improved communication with the public. Despite this progress, public expectations of euro area inflation have remained widely dispersed. Reducing such dispersion through clearer communication could lead to more informed spending and saving decisions, contribute to economic stability, and help to ensure a smooth transmission of monetary policy.

Direct contact between the public and central banks is relatively rare. That is why it is challenging to measure the influence monetary policy communication has on non-experts in real-world settings. However, several studies have examined the response to information treatments in randomised survey experiments, by making use of the ECB's Consumer Expectations Survey. These studies suggest that consumers may respond positively to central bank communication. For example, providing people with information about the ECB's inflation target can help to reduce the dispersion of their inflation expectations around the target.^[1] But such survey experiments may fail to accurately capture real-world behaviour, as responses to online surveys may be biased towards the researchers' hypotheses. That's why the field experiment described in this post provides more detailed insights into the behavioural changes of households and showcases how direct central bank communication can influence non-experts' inflation expectations.

The experiment

The ECB offers on-site lectures in Frankfurt for groups and individuals. Participants are non-experts, but usually have some interest in and knowledge of economics. The sessions are interactive and start with a one-hour presentation by an ECB staff expert followed by questions and answers. For our experiment, between December 2022 and May 2025, we conducted 117 sessions with a total of 5,000 participants.

Visitor groups were randomly assigned to one of three categories (see Chart 1): a treated group, a placebo group and a control group.

At the beginning of each session, we invited all participating visitors to answer a set of nine initial questions on their smartphones. This allowed us: 1) to test each visitor's existing knowledge of monetary policy, for example whether they know what the ECB's main objective is; 2) to gather individual perceptions of current euro area inflation and growth, i.e. what they assumed the current inflation rate to be; and 3) to collect information about individual demographics, such as gender, education and age.

After this first set of questions the treated groups received presentations from ECB experts on the ECB's monetary policy framework and monetary policy decisions. The placebo groups received presentations about ECB tasks unrelated to monetary policy, such as banking supervision.

Following the information treatment, i.e. after the lecture, we asked visitors a second set of five questions. These measured the effect of the visit on participants' expectations for growth and inflation, their understanding of the inflation target, the ECB's monetary policy instruments and our monetary policy decision-making process.

The control groups also attended lectures, but the process differed in one important aspect. Unlike the other groups they got the second set of five extra questions before the lecture and not after.

Comparing outcomes between the treated and control groups, as well as between the placebo and control groups, allows us to estimate the average treatment effect. We check whether directly communicating information on the ECB's monetary policy affects participants' knowledge and expectations.

Chart 1

So, what did the experiment reveal?

Our experiment demonstrates that the information treatment improved participants' knowledge as well as their understanding of the ECB's monetary policy and its inflation target. Especially, participants with low levels of prior knowledge learned from the presentations. They showed significantly higher monetary literacy than their counterparts with similar prior knowledge in the control group. After the lecture they knew more about, for example, the inflation target or monetary policy instruments.

There are four key findings.

First, on average the share of participants expressing inflation expectations in line with the ECB's target of 2% was 15 percentage points higher in the treatment group than in the control group (see Chart 2). Overall, it is plausible to explain this difference with the information treatment. In other words: part of the treatment group adjusted their expectations in line with the ECB's target because they participated in the lecture.

Second, looking more closely into the reasons for this difference of 15 percentage points, we find that the level of prior knowledge of the ECB's monetary policy is a key factor. We find the biggest treatment effect among those with the lowest level of prior knowledge. Here, the effect is over 40 percentage points (see Chart 2). In short: gaining a better understanding of the ECB's monetary policy significantly helps to align people's inflation expectations with its target - especially among those with little prior knowledge.

Chart 2

Third, we find learning about the ECB's policy objectives and its precise inflation target enabled a substantial share of non-experts to revise their medium-term inflation expectations towards the ECB's target (see Chart 3, blue bars). This was established by categorising participants into three sub-groups, based on their prior knowledge of the ECB's inflation target:

• participants not familiar with either the ECB's mandate or the inflation target (sub-group 1);
• participants aware of the ECB's mandate but not the precise inflation target (sub-group 2); and
• participants with an understanding of both the ECB's mandate and its specific inflation target (sub-group 3).

Fourth, we find that the anchoring of participants' inflation expectations improved even more when they were addressed in their native language (see Chart 3, yellow bars). It is plausible to explain this as a trust-based effect of communication that goes beyond participants learning about monetary policy. Individuals addressed in their native language might feel more confident in their ability to comprehend central bank messages and might be more likely to trust the speaker.

Chart 3

Main takeaways

Direct communication with non-experts can bring their medium-term inflation expectations substantially closer to the ECB's inflation target. Our field experiment indicates that the ECB can enhance the effectiveness of its communication by tailoring messages to diverse audiences and making efforts to improve public knowledge of the ECB's monetary policy. This could be supported by targeted educational programmes in schools and universities to improve people's knowledge of monetary policy over time. Complementary and intensified use of indirect channels, not tested in the study, - such as social media, traditional media and accessible resources, like the ECB's website and visitor centre, or this blog - should also ensure messages reach broader audiences beyond expert circles. Finally, these findings indicate that trust-building efforts and multilingual communication in different EU languages are essential to fostering public engagement and ensuring the effectiveness of monetary policy communication.

The views expressed in each blog entry are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the European Central Bank and the Eurosystem.

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1. See for example Ehrmann, M., Georgarakos, D. and Kenny, G., "Credibility gains from communicating with the public: evidence from the ECB's new monetary policy strategy", Working Paper Series, No 2785, ECB, February 2023.

Related topics

• Communication
• Monetary policy