A Band-Aid Solution to Inflation Targeting

This paper reviews selectively the literature on exchange rate target zones and corresponding methodologies and examines whether they can be used to analyse the inflation-control problem. Given the close correspondence between the exchange rate and inflation-targeting problems, the target-zone literature may help us better understand inflation dynamics and central-bank credibility in the presence of inflation-control targets or ranges. While we find many common elements across the exchange rate and inflation-control target-zone problems, we also find several important differences that make a direct application of the exchange rate target-zone techniques difficult.