We study the welfare implication of average inflation targeting as a simple interest-rate rule, in which the monetary authority adjusts its short-term policy rate in response to the output gap as well as average inflation deviation from its target instead of reacting to the contemporaneous...

How and under what circumstances can adjusting the inflation target serve as a stabilization-policy tool and contribute to welfare improvement? We answer these questions quantitatively with a standard New Keynesian model that includes cost-push type shocks. Our proposed inflation target rule...

Does raising an inflation target require increasing the nominal interest rate in the short run? We answer this question using a standard New Keynesian model with rich backward-looking elements. We first analytically show that the short-run comovement between inflation and the nominal interest...

We distinguish between the goods and services sectors in an otherwise standard unobserved components model of US inflation. Our main finding is that, while both sectors used to contribute to the overall variation in aggregate trend inflation, since the 1990s this variation has been driven almost...

How and under what circumstances can adjusting the inflation target serve as a stabilization-policy tool and contribute to welfare improvement? We answer these questions quantitatively with a standard New Keynesian model that includes cost-push type shocks which create a trade-off between...

We investigate how conventional and unconventional monetary policies affect the dynamics of the yield curve by assessing the performance of individual yield curve models and their mixtures. Out-of-sample forecasts for U.S. bond yields show that the arbitrage-free Nelson-Siegel model and its...

Would raising the inflation target require an increase in the nominal interest rate in the short run?We answer this policy question, first analytically in a small-scale New Keynesian model with backward-looking components where a closed-form solution exists, and then in a medium-scale model of...