How have monetary policies matured during the last decade? The recent downturn in economies worldwide have put monetary policies in a new spotlight. In addition to their investigations of new tools, models, and assumptions, they look carefully at recent evidence on subjects as varied as...

This chapter reviews the theory of optimal monetary stabilization policy in New Keynesian models, with particular emphasis on developments since the treatment of this topic in Woodford (2003). The primary emphasis of the chapter is on methods of analysis that are useful in this area, rather than...

In this paper we critically review the literature on the political economy of monetary policy, with an eye on the questions raised by the recent financial crisis. We begin with a discussion of rules versus discretion. We then examine the issue of the central bank's independence (CBI) both in...

Robust control theory is a tool for assessing decision rules when a decision maker distrusts either the specification of transition laws or the distribution of hidden state variables or both. Specification doubts inspire the decision maker to want a decision rule to work well for a [empty set]...

Central banks no longer set the short-term interest rates that they use for monetary policy purposes by manipulating the supply of banking system reserves, as in conventional economics textbooks; this process normally involves little or no variation in the supply of central bank liabilities. In...

This paper compares the performance of economies with different monetary regimes during the last quarter century. The conclusions include: (1) There is little evidence that inflation targeting affects performance in advanced economies, but some evidence of benefits in emerging economies; (2)...

Inflation targeting is a monetary-policy strategy characterized by an announced numerical inflation target, an implementation of monetary policy that gives a major role to an inflation forecast that has been called forecast targeting, and a high degree of transparency and accountability. It was...