Despite the fact that the U.S. economy has been performing very well recently, monetary policymakers have been the targets of some criticism. In the speech reprinted here, which was delivered to a group of bankers in June 1997, St. Louis Federal Reserve President Thomas C. Melzer responds to the...

This paper explores the behavior of inflation in countries that formally target inflation - relative to countries with historically good inflation records - but, which do not target the rate of change in the consumer price index (CPI). Pierre L. Siklos examines the design of inflation targets...

The U.S. economy performed well across the board in 1997, with low unemployment, robust economic growth, and the lowest sustained inflation in decades. Nevertheless, the current framework for monetary policymaking does not ensure that inflation is down for the count, says Federal Reserve Bank of...

This paper extends the analysis of price-level targeting to a model including the New-Keynesian Phillips Curve. We examine the inflation-output variability tradeoffs implied by optimal inflation and price-level rules. In previous work with the Neoclassical Phillips Curve, we found that the...