A key insight from the open economy literature is that domestic price stability is in general not optimal for countries that exert some market power over their terms of trade. Under commitment, a national benevolent monetary policymaker improves upon the allocation associated with stable...

This paper attempts at characterising South Korean monetary policy in the period of explicit inflation targeting started in 1999. We explain Korean interest rates in relation to an estimated macro-model, assuming that monetary policy is set optimally. This allows us to obtain the central bank's...

Research with Keynesian-style models has emphasized the importance of the output gap for policies aimed at controlling inflation while declaring monetary aggregates largely irrelevant. Critics, however, have argued that these models need to be modified to account for observed money growth and...

From the onset of the 2007-2009 crisis, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have aggressively lowered interest rates. Both sets of changes are at odds with an anti-inflationary stance of monetary policy; indeed, as the crisis began in August 2007 inflation expectations were high...

We analyse the implications of asymmetric monetary policy rules by estimating Markovswitching DSGE models for the euro area (EA) and the US. The estimations show that until mid-2014 the ECB's response to in ation was more forceful when in ation was above 2% than below 2%. Since then, the ECB's...

Assigning a discretionary central bank a mandate to stabilize an average in ation rate| rather than a period-by-period in ation rate|increases welfare in a New Keynesian model with an occasionally binding lower bound on nominal interest rates. Under rational expecta- tions, the...

The presence of a lower bound of zero on nominal interest rates has important implications for the conduct of optimal monetary policy. Standard rational expectations models can have alternative steady states as well as non-unique laws of motion, i.e. there can be possible sunspot equilibria....

Inflation targeting is implemented in different ways - most often by adopting point targets, by having tolerance bands around a point target, or by specifying target ranges. Using data for 20 economies, this paper tests whether the various target types affect the anchoring of inflation...

During the turbulent 1970s and 1980s the Bundesbank established an outstanding reputation in the world of central banking. Germany achieved a high degree of domestic stability and provided safe haven for investors in times of turmoil in the international financial system. Eventually the...

Estimations of simple monetary policy rules are often very rigid. Standard practice requires that a decision is made as to which indicators the central bank is assumed to respond to, ignoring the data-rich environment in which policy-makers typically form their decisions. However, the choice of...