In this paper we systematically evaluate how central banks respond to deviations from the inflation target. We present a stylized New Keynesian model in which agents' inflation expectations are sensitive to deviations from the inflation target. To (re-) establish credibility, monetary policy...

This paper shows that monetary policy should be delegated to a central bank that cross-checks optimal policy with information from the Taylor rule. Attaching some weight to deviations of the interest rate from the interest rate prescribed by the Taylor rule is beneficial if the central bank aims...

This paper investigates how FOMC members revise their forecasts for key macroeconomic variables. Based on a new data set of forecasts from individual FOMC members between 1992 and 2000 it is shown that FOMC members intentionally overrevise their forecasts at the first revision and underrevise at...

A long-standing area of research and policy interest has been the construction of a measure of monetary policy stance. One measure that has been proposed—as an alternative to indices that employ monetary aggregates or exchange rates—is the spread between the actual real interest rate and its...

The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. In this paper, we explore possible justifications. The case against including money in the central bank's interest rate rule is based on a standard model...

In this paper, we explore the interest rate setting behavior of newly appointed central bank governors. We use the Kuttner and Posen (2010) sample, which covers 15 OECD countries, and estimate an augmented Taylor (1993) rule for the period 1974–2008. We find, first, that newly appointed...

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve consists of voting- and non-voting members. Apart from deciding about interest rate policy, members individually formulate regular inflation forecasts. This paper uncovers systematic differences in individual inflation forecasts...

This note uncovers the Phillips curve trade-off perceived by U.S. monetary policymakers. For that purpose we use data on individual forecasts for unemployment and inflation submitted by each individual FOMC member, which was recently made available for the period 1992-1998. The results point to...

The European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has created a new economic area, larger and closer with respect to the rest of the world. Area-specific shocks are thus more important in EMU than country-specific shocks used to be in the previous states, e.g. in Germany. It is thus not surprising...

This article complements the structural New-Keynesian macro framework with a no-arbitrage affine term structure model. Whereas our methodology is general, we focus on an extended macro-model with unobservable processes for the inflation target and the natural rate of output which are filtered...