We use a standard new Keynesian model to evaluate the cost of disinflation - measured by the sacrifice ratio, the central bank's loss function, and the welfare cost - in a small open economy vis-à-vis a closed economy. Disinflation is either more costly or less beneficial in the small open...

This paper demonstrates how a target for money growth can be beneficial for an inflation targeting central bank acting under discretion. Because the growth rate of money is closely related to the change in the interest rate and he growth of real output, delegating a money growth target to the...

This paper considers the evidence of near-rationality, as described by Akerlof, Dickens, and Perry (2000). Using detailed surveys of household inflation expectations for the United States and Sweden, we find that the data are generally unsupportive of the near-rationality hypothesis. However, we...

This paper discusses how monetary policy in Sweden has evolved since 1973. We provide a chronology of the different monetary policy regimes in place during the past fifty years and identify two main regimes, the pegged-but-adjustable exchange rate regime (1973 - 1992) and the inflation targeting...

Using detailed Swedish micro data on prices and costs, this paper documents a decrease in the dispersion of changes in prices and markups following the introduction of an official inflation target of 2 percent. Using a structural model to decompose the change in the price-change distribution by...

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...

This paper analyzes the central bank s optimal objective function in a small open economy model allowing for incomplete exchange rate pass-through. The results indicate that there are welfare gains from different types of monetary policy inertia. The welfare improvements of exchange rate...

Monetary policy is often analysed in terms of simple rules. Such rules may be useful for many purposes, even when they do not describe the actual monetary policy strategy exactly. This paper compares monetary policy in Sweden during the inflation-targeting regime 19932002 with the policies...

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 examines a price-level target in a model with a forward-looking Calvo-Taylor Phillips curve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is found that price-level targeting leads to a better trade-off between inflation and output-gap variability than inflation targeting, when the central bank...