[...]Like the other countries examined, the United Kingdomadopted inflation targets after a successful disinflation.Unlike these countries, however, the UnitedKingdom took this step in the aftermath of a foreignexchange rate crisis in order to restore a nominalanchor and to lock in past...

The global financial crisis that began in mid-2007 has renewedconcerns about financial instability and focused attention onthe fundamental role of central banks in preventing andmanaging systemic crises. In response to the turmoil, centralbanks have made extensive use of both new and existing...

Monetary policy has traditionally been viewed as theprocess by which a central bank uses its influence overthe supply of money to promote its economic objectives. Forexample, Milton Friedman (1959, p. 24) defined the tools ofmonetary policy to be those “powers that enable the [FederalReserve]...

[...]In my view, a goal of price stability requires thatmonetary policy be oriented beyond the horizon of itsimmediate impact on inflation and the economy. Thisimmediate horizon is on the order of two to three years.This orientation properly puts the focus of a forwardlookingpolicy on the time...

[...]The first intellectual development challenging the use ofan activist monetary policy to stimulate output and reduceunemployment is the finding, most forcefully articulatedby Milton Friedman, that the effects of monetary policyhave long and variable lags.1 The uncertainty of the timingand...

[...]Inflation targeting in New Zealand followed legislationthat mandated a Policy Targets Agreement (PTA)between the elected government and the newlyindependent central bank, which resulted in a jointlydecided numerical target for inflation.[...]

[...]Inflation targeting in Canada was not the result oflegislation. However, as in New Zealand, the inflationtarget in Canada is jointly determined and announcedby both the government and the central bank.[...]

[...]This paper traces the evolution of Fedwire fromtwelve separate payment operations, linked only by aninterdistrict communications arrangement, to a more unifiedand efficient system. Our account highlights both thedifficulties the Federal Reserve encountered as it soughtto standardize and...

The paper evaluates the performance of three popular monetary policy rules when the central bank is learning aboutthe parameter values of a simple New Keynesian model. The three policies are: (1) the optimal non-inertial rule; (2)the optimal history-dependent rule; (3) the optimal price-level...

This paper studies an advantage of commitment over discretion when a central bankobserves only noisy measures of current inflation and output, in the context of an optimizingmodel with nominal-price stickiness. Under a commitment regime, if current policy turns outto be too expansionary...