The central banks in New Zealand, Colombia, and most recently Norway have been announcing projections of their policy path for future interest rates. Publication of forecasts and policy projections can help the public and the markets understand central bank actions, thus decreasing uncertainty and making it easier for the public and markets to assess whether the central bank is serious about achieving its inflation goal.

The possibility that discussions of future policy, even nonspecific, could create presumptions about a string of policy actions makes finding a consensus among policymakers on what to say about future interest rates quite difficult--more so than agreeing on the policy today. It is no accident that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand stands out as about the only central bank to publish such a path and as one of the few in which decisions are the responsibility of only one individual.

The possibility that discussions of future policy, even nonspecific, could create presumptions about a string of policy actions makes finding a consensus among policymakers on what to say about future interest rates quite difficult--more so than agreeing on the policy today. It is no accident that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand stands out as about the only central bank to publish such a path and as one of the few in which decisions are the responsibility of only one individual.

More controversially, the FOMC might consider forecasting future values of the short-term interest rate, as is currently done by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The difficulty would be to make clear that an interest-rate forecast is not the same as a policy commitment. The use of "fan charts" to indicate the range of uncertainty would be helpful in this regard; and indeed, providing more information about the range of uncertainty for all FOMC forecasts would be a useful innovation.