The purpose of this paper is to examine the merits of monetary policy rules that utilize as their principal target variable the level or growth rate of some aggregate reasure of nominal spending, such as nominal GDP, rather than a monetary aggregate or an index of inflation (either alone or in...

The recent debate over monetary policy strategies concludes that monetary targeting in practice lead to very similar patterns of central bank behaviour. This raises the question why central banks insist on the strategies they use. In this paper, we develop an answer from political economy. After...

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This paper discusses how price stability can be defined and how price stability can be maintained in practice. Some lessons for the Eurosystem are also considered. With regard to defining price stability, the choice between price-level stability and low (including zero) inflation and the...

The paper discusses the choice between inflation targeting and monetary targeting as a strategy for the Eurosystem, the actual strategy the Eurosystem announced in the fall of 1998, the framework of the policy decisions appropriate for achieving the goals of the Eurosystem, the role of the...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the merits of monetary policy rules that utilize as their principal target variable the level or growth rate of some aggregate measure of nominal spending, such as nominal GDP, rather than a monetary aggregate or an index of inflation. The main objective...

This paper examines the implications of recent research on monetary policy rules for practical monetary policy making, with special emphasis on strategies for setting interest rates by the new European Central Bank (ECB). The paper draws on recent research and new simulations of a large open...

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The optimal weights on indicators in models with partial information about the state of the economy and forward-looking variables are derived and interpreted, both for equilibria under discretion and under commitment. The private sector is assumed to have information about the state of the...

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...