Does it matter whether central banks publish minutes?

A speech by Mario Draghi last week suggested that it is increasingly likely that the ECB will begin publishing the minutes of its Governing Council meetings in the near future. This would bring it into line with the other major central banks. However, experience suggests that the usefulness of the minutes will depend on what form they take. In the ECB case, we suspect that they would contain relatively little new information and would therefore have only a modest impact on expectations for monetary policy. Moreover, if they did provide more information they could even undermine the forward guidance which the ECB has recently used to good effect.