In the new situation with flexible exchange rates, monetary policy in Europe will have to rely more on indicators than previously under fixed rates. One of the potential indicators, the forward interest rate curve, can be used to indicate market expectations of the time-paths of future short...

Policy rules that are consistent with inflation targeting are examined in a small macroeconomic model of the US economy. We compare the properties and outcomes of explicit instrument rules' as well as targeting rules.' The latter, which imply implicit instrument rules, may be closer to actual...

Using a small empirical model of inflation, output, and money estimated on U.S. data, we compare the relative performance of monetary targeting and inflation targeting. The results show that monetary targeting would be quite inefficient, with both higher inflation and output variability. This is...

In the summer of 2010, the Federal Reserve's and the Swedish Riksbank's inflation forecasts were below the former's mandate-consistent rate and the latter's target, respectively, and their unemployment forecasts were above sustainable rates. Given the mandates of the Federal Reserve and the...

We study how the use of judgement or “add-factors” in macroeconomic forecasting may disturb the set of equilibrium outcomes when agents learn using recursive methods. We isolate conditions under which new phenomena, which we call exuberance equilibria, can exist in standard macroeconomic...

Inflation targeting is a monetary-policy strategy that is characterized by an announced numerical inflation target, an implementation of monetary policy that gives a major role to an inflation forecast and has been called forecast targeting, and a high degree of transparency and accountability....

We define and study transparency, credibility, and reputation in a model where the central bank's characteristics are unobservable to the private sector and are inferred from the policy outcome. A low-credibility bank optimally conducts a more inflationary policy than a high-credibility bank, in...

Inflation targeting is shown to imply inflation forecast targeting: the central bank's inflation forecast becomes an explicit intermediate target. Inflation forecast targeting simplifies both implementation and monitoring of monetary policy. The weight on output stabilization determines how...

We examine global dynamics under infinite-horizon learning in New Keynesian models where the interest-rate rule is subject to the zero lower bound. As in Evans, Guse and Honkapohja (2008), the intended steady state is locally but not globally stable. Unstable deflationary paths emerge after...

A simple and transparent framework for cost-benefit analysis of \leaning against the wind" (LAW), that is, tighter monetary policy for financial-stability purposes, is presented. LAW has obvious costs in the form of a weaker economy if no crisis occurs and possible benefits in the form of a...