Committees always seem to have chairmen, and monetary policy committees (MPCs) are no exception. But some MPCs are dominated by their chairmen, who are definitely first among unequals, while others come closer to making decisions by true consensus or even by major? ity vote. Does it matter? Is strong leadership an important ingredient in good monetary policy? With no real-world observations on leaderless

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication—mostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this ever-growing literature. The evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank's toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets, to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions, and potentially to help achieve central banks' macroeconomic objectives. However, the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy.