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...

The 2002 Policy Targets Agreement (PTA) between the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the government asks the Reserve Bank to target inflation "over the medium term" rather than over an annual target. This medium term objective shifts inflation targeting towards a "halfway-house" between inflation...

This paper tests the standard quadratic approximation to central bank preferences on data from Australia and New Zealand, two of the earliest explicit inflation targeting countries. The standard linear-quadratic monetary policy model assumes central bank preferences over key macroeconomic...

This paper extends the `Five Area Bilateral Equilibrium Exchange Rate' (FABEER) model used in Wren-Lewis (2003) to include New Zealand and Australia. This model calculates medium term exchange rates conditional on assumptions for `sustainable' current accounts. The model suggests that the...

We conduct a high frequency event analysis to estimate the effects of monetary policy surprises, data surprises, and central bank verbal statements on the New Zealand-US dollar and the New Zealand-Australian dollar exchange rates. We find data surprises and monetary policy surprises have...

We estimate underlying macroeconomic policy objectives of three of the earliest explicit inflation targeters - Australia, Canada and New Zealand - within the context of a small open economy DSGE model. We assume central banks set policy optimally, such that we can reverse engineer policy...

New Zealand data show that the inflation-output relationship is asymmetric. This asymmetry implies that positive demand shocks tend to increase inflation by more than negative demand shocks of similar magnitudes reduce it. An important implication of this asymmetry is that a monetary authority...

This paper quantifies the costs of mitigating exchange rate volatility within the context of a flexible inflation targeting central bank. Within a standard linearquadratic formulation of inflation targeting, we append a term that penalises deviations in the exchange rate to the central bank’s...

Typical New Keynesian open economy models suggest a limited response to the exchange rate. This paper examines the role of the open economy in determining robust rules when the central bank fears various model misspecification errors. The paper calibrates a hybrid New Keynesian model to broadly...

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...