This paper analyzes the U.S. congressional proposal to instruct the Federal Reserve to, in the next five years, lower inflation to zero from its current rate of around 5 percent. The paper concludes that, when other policy options are considered, the zero inflation policy is not advisable. Its...

Economists and policymakers disagree on the lengths central banks should go in pursuit of price stability and, in fact, on exactly what price stability means. This essay advocates that central banks try to maintain stable price levels in their countries, and it argues that the benefits of...

This essay distills the differences between zero inflation proponents and critics to three main questions: Can the central bank make a credible commitment to maintaining a stable price level? Should monetary policy be used to reduce the tax on capital income? And would reducing uncertainty about...

Many traditional macroeconomic models do not have determinate predictions for the path of inflation: even for a given specification of money supplies, many paths of inflation are consistent with equilibrium. According to the fiscal theory of the price level, fiscal policy can be used to select...

This study evaluates the conventional wisdom that modern Phillips curve-based models are useful tools for forecasting inflation. These models are based on the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (the NAIRU). The study compares the accuracy, over the last 15 years, of three sets of...

This article estimates the benefits of reducing U.S. inflation below its current level when the government simultaneously raises another distortionary tax. Other researchers have suggested that reducing inflation would have fairly large benefits—from 1 to 3 percent of gross domestic product....

This paper describes and evaluates P-Star (P*), a new method to forecast inflation trends which was introduced by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in the summer of 1989. The paper examines how well P* would have done, compared with eight other forecasting methods, had all of these methods...

Should monetary authorities rely primarily on rules or their own discretion in conducting monetary policy? The debate has recently been revived by researchers who claim that discretionary monetary policy tempts policy makers to exploit a short-run trade-off between output and inflation and...

This study analyzes two monetary economies, a cash-credit good model and a limited-participation model. In these models, monetary policy is made by a benevolent policymaker who cannot commit to future policies. The study defines and analyzes Markov equilibrium in these economies and shows that...