This paper is the introductory chapter in my book, Monetary Policy Strategy, forthcoming from MIT Press. I thank my editor Elizabeth Murry for her extremely helpful comments. Any views expressed in this paper are those of the author only and not those of Columbia University or the National...

Yes, as inferred from panel evidence for inflation-targeting countries and a control group of high-achieving industrial countries that do not target inflation. Our evidence suggests that inflation targeting helps countries achieve lower inflation in the long run, have a smaller inflation...

In recent years, a number of central banks have chosen to orient their monetary policy toward the achievement of numerical inflation targets. This study examines the experience of the first three countries to adopt an inflation-targeting strategy - New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It...

In this paper we examine how target ranges work in the context of a Barro-Gordon (1983) type model, in which the time-inconsistency problem stems from political pressures from the government. We show that target ranges turn out to be an excellent way to cope with the time-inconsistency problem,...