This paper uses multiple criteria decision making, also termed conjoint analysis,to reveal the preferences of central bank policy-makers at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Guided by the Policy Targets Agreement between the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Minister of Finance, we identify...

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand was the first central bank to publish interest rate projections as a tool for forward guidance of monetary policy. This paper provides new evidence on the information content of interest rate projections for market expectations about future short-term rates before...

This paper uses wavelets to develop a core inflation measure for inflation targeting central banks. The analysis is applied to the case of New Zealand – the country with the longest history of explicit inflation targeting. We compare the performance of our proposed measure against some popular...

This paper examines stabilisation bias - the difference between the inferior macroeconomic outcomes attained with discretionary monetary policy relative to the ideal that could be attained with commitment policy. The paper works within the linear-quadratic framework and represents the monetary...

Many critics of the Taylor rule claim that it is inferior to inflation forecast based (IFB) rules because it is not forward-looking, is not aggressive enough, and because of uncertainty surrounding the output gap. Nevertheless, the Taylor rule serves a constructive purpose because it abstracts...

Previous research has suggested that including exchange rate stabilisation within the goals of monetary policy significantly increases the volatility of inflation, output and interest rates, and that the benefits of exchange rate stabilisation therefore do not justify the costs. The current...

This paper addresses the real-time versus ex-post properties of the output gap as quantified by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's multivariate (MV) filter, starting with the second quarter of 1997, when the current procedure was implemented. There are three sources of revisions of the output...

I investigate New Zealand's rate of inflation and its deviations from target using two new methods: 1) Rowe's (2002) new way of examining the correlations between inflation deviations from target and indicators. Any significant correlations, whether in a simple or multivariate framework, are...

We use the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's macroeconomic model (FPS) to look at the feasibility of using monetary policy to reduce variability in output, the exchange rate and interest rates while maintaining an inflation target. Our experiment suggests that policy could be altered to increase the...

We examine the informational content of New Zealand data releases using a parametric dynamic factor model estimated with unbalanced real-time panels of quarterly data. The data are categorised into 21 different release blocks, allowing us to make 21 different factor model forecasts each quarter....