One of the issues facing Nigeria today is the choice among two nominal anchors: exchange rate pegging or inflation targeting. The incessant increase in interest rates, exchange rates, money supply and domestic credit have all accumulated, leading to persistent inflation in Nigeria. At this...

The fiscal policy environment central banks operate in can be radically different with respect to debt levels, maturity structures and whether or not fiscal adjustments are spending or tax based. Despite this, most analyses of monetary policy delegation schemes typically ignore the behavior of...

This paper analyzes the performance of central banks in 27 inflation targeting countries by examining their success in achieving their explicit inflation targets. For this purpose, we decompose the inflation gap, the difference between actual inflation and inflation target, into predictable and...

We develop a model that can explain the evolution of trend inflation in the United States in the three decades before the Great Recession as a function of the reduction in uncertainty about the monetary policy maker's behaviour. The model features ambiguity-averse agents and ambiguity regarding...

Many central banks target an inflation rate near two percent. This essay argues that policymakers would do better to target four percent inflation. A four percent target would ease the constraints on monetary policy arising from the zero bound on interest rates, with the result that economic...

This paper explores the impact of the adoption of inflation targeting (IT) on the dynamics of city-level inflation in Korea using both aggregate and sector-level data. When looking at aggregate regional inflation, we find that the mean, volatility and persistence fell in all cities in the wake...

Many argue that, in the presence of a lower bound on nominal interest rates, central banks should use a risk management approach for setting policy, which implies committing to a more expansionary policy to deal with uncertainty about the economic recovery. Using a standard model for monetary...

This article examines the performance of inflation targeters during the 2007-2012 downturn compared to those without this policy. Propensity score matching methods are used to compare the policy regimes, where during a downturn the more successful policy results in higher inflation and output...

The paper aims to propose some non-distortionary monetary policy objective consistent with the Austrian business cycle theory. Since the price level should fall in the growing economy, introduction of negative inflation target is suggested. Such policy should lead to the smoothing of the...

We study how changes in the value of the steady-state real interest rate affect the optimal inflation target, both in the U.S. and the euro area, using an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model that incorporates the zero (or effective) lower bound on the nominal interest rate. We find that this...