In September 1931, Sweden became the first country to make the stabilization of the domestic price level the official goal of its monetary policy, actually the only country that so far has adopted such an explicit price level target. Starting from the issues and concepts familiar from research...

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

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...

This paper analyzes the central bank’s optimal objective function in a small open economy model allowing for incomplete exchange rate pass-through. The results indicate that there are welfare gains from different types of monetary policy inertia. The welfare improvements of exchange rate...

The central bank's optimal reaction to foreign and domestic shocks is analyzed in an inflation targeting model allowing for incomplete exchange rate pass-through. Limited pass-through is incorporated through nominal rigidities in an aggregate supply-aggregate demand model derived from some...

This paper investigates the performance of various monetary rules in an open economy with incomplete exchange rate pass-through. Implementing monetary policy through an exchange rate augmented policy rule does not improve social welfare compared to using an optimized Taylor rule, irrespective of...

We analyze exchange rate pass-through and volatility of import prices in a dynamic framework where firms are subject to menu costs and decide on price adjustments in response to exchange rate innovations. The exchange rate pass-through and import price volatility then depend on the pricing...

This report, commissioned by Sveriges Riksbank, examines the role of currency denomination in international trade transactions. It is divided in two parts. The first part consists of a survey of the price setting and payment practices of a large sample of Swedish exporting firms. The second part...