Economic behavior as well as economic resources of individuals vary with age. Swedish time series show that the age structure of the population contains information correlated to medium-term trends in growth, inflation and other macroeconomic data. GDP gaps estimated by age structure regressions...

The correlation between persistent changes in the markup in one sector of an economy and the inflation rate is quantified in a 2-sector dynamic general equilibrium model. How this relationship is affected by monetary policy is also studied. We find that the correlation is in general positive...

Recent research have provided evidence that backward-looking models fit the data well while purely forward-looking models seem to be inconsistent with data. Consequently, many recent papers in the monetary policy rule literature have used "hybrid" models, which contain both backward- and...

How do aggregate quantities at the business cycle frequency respond to shocks to the spread between residential mortgage rates and government bonds? Using a structural VAR approach, we find that mortgage spread shocks impact the real economy by both economically and statistically significant...

A central bank pursuing the policy of inflation targeting aims to keep inflation as close as possible to a pre-announced value. But which 'inflation' should this be? Quarterly, annual, biennial? In theoretical models it is typically inflation during one period. We analyze how changing the period...

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...

What are the implications of targeting different measures of inflation? We extend a basic theoretical framework of optimal monetary policy under inflation targeting to include several components of CPI inflation ratio, and analyze the implications of using different measures of inflation as...

In this paper key points in the development of the present Swedish inflation-targeting strategy are analysed. Since the implementation of the inflation target strategy began in 1993, three different phases are distinguished: the establishment of the inflation target, the communication of...

This paper derives closed-form expressions for optimal monetary policy rules when the central bank can influence inflation directly with a one-period lag as well as a two-period lagged effect via the output gap. It turns out that even a modest one-period inflation effect from monetary policy...

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...