The communication strategy of central banks and their impact on public: The case of SNB and the EUR/CHF exchange rate

Over the last two decades, communication by central banks has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. It has continued to evolve and a huge new scholarly literature has been developed on central bank communication since the onset of the financial crisis. As far as monetary policy announcement is concerned, one of the most abrupt move was the discontinuation by the Swiss National Bank of the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per EUR on January 15th 2015. First, this event is examined in relation to the introduction of years before and an argumentative analysis is carried out on the announcements disclosed by the SNB in those occasions. Not only the motivations behind each decision are scrutinized, but also the reasons provided to each standpoint are examined in depth, in order to judge a sort of coherence in the arguments brought by the SNB. Secondly, the reaction of the media immediately after the discontinuation announcement is observed on a sample of newspapers, resulting in a short-term focus compared to the one of the SNB that knows that communicating such decision might create a strong reaction in the media and therefore that a good communication is needed.