Inflation Targeting - The Holy Grail of Monetary Policy?

This paper argues that the success of inflation targeting is principally the result of having a clear unambiguous goal, price stability, for monetary policy that is determined not only by the central bank but by the political authorities more generally. With such a goal in place, and with support from other macroeconomic policies, the actual operating procedure a central bank should follow depends critically on the transmission mechanism of monetary policy and on the sources of shocks in the economy. It follows that implementation of a strategy of targeting inflation could look very different from one country to another. What would be an appropriate policy rule in an industrialized country would not necessarily be suitable in an emerging market even if the ultimate goal of the central bank were the same.