Within a simple New Keynesian model emphasizing forward-looking behavior of private agents, I evaluate optimal nominal income growth targeting versus optimal inflation targeting. When the economy under consideration is mainly subject to shocks that do not involve monetary policy trade-offs for...

Recently, Svensson (1997) has shown that a combination of state-contingent inflation targeting and central banker conservatism produces optimal monetary policy if employment is persistent. We argue that the state-contingent nature of the scheme may undermine its credibility. We then show that...

Within a standard model of monetary delegation we show thta the optimal linear inflation contract performs strictly better than the optimal inflation target when there is uncertainty about the central banker's preferences. The optimal combination of a contract and a target performs best and...