This paper outlines important lessons for monetary policy. In particular, the role of inflation targeting, which was much acclaimed prior to the financial crisis and since then has not lost much of its endorsement, is critically reviewed. Ignoring the relation between monetary policy and asset...

This paper evaluates the performance of two alternative policy rules, a forward-looking rule and a spontaneous adjustment rule, under alternative inflation targets, in terms of output losses in a macroeconomic model, using European Union data. The simulations suggest that forward-looking rules...

This paper outlines a simple three-country macroeconomic model designed to focus on the transmission of external shocks to Portugal. Building on the framework developed by Berg et al (2006), this model differentiates between shocks originating from both inside and outside the euro area, as well...

The experience of full-fledged inflation targeting (FFIT) countries is used here to shed light on the costs and benefits of greater monetary policy transparency for the G3. For the United States and the euro area, a hypothetical adoption of FFIT would incur a cost of less discretion while...

As with many monetary policy frameworks, inflation targeting is subject to the well-known problem of inflation bias. With inflation targeting, however, the bias becomes apparent not as inflation above desired levels, but as a wedge between the announced target and observed inflation. This...

The global financial crisis has exposed the limitations of a conventional inflation targeting (IT) framework in insulating an economy from shocks, and demonstrated that its rigid application may aggravate the effect of shocks on output and inflation. Accordingly, we investigate possible...

The paper considers the merits of rules and discretion for monetary policy when the structure of the macroeconomic model and the probability distributions of disturbances are not well defined. It is argued that when it is costly to delay policy reactions to seldom-experienced shocks until formal...