When a central bank operates with multiple, non-nested models of the economy, generally no single policy rule will be optimal across within alternate models. In this context, Levin and Williams (2003) introduce the notion of fault tolerance of policy rules, that is, the performance of policy...

In this final edition of the Reserve Bank Bulletin for 2009, we present a range of articles about the New Zealand economy, spanning a number of the Reserve Bank’s functions.

The 2002 Policy Targets Agreement (PTA) between the government and central bank of New Zealand asks the central bank to target inflation "over the medium term" rather than over an annual target. Delegating such a medium term objective to the central bank shifts inflation targeting towards a...

Under a Bayesian framework of model uncertainty, closed economy models of monetary policy typically suggest that policy responses should be attenuated. Conversely, under a Knightian view of uncertainty, where the policymaker cannot specify probabilities across alternative models, intensifying...

For policymakers, thinking about best practice monetary policy means thinking about uncertainty. Open economy monetary policymakers face an additional source of uncertainty – exchange rate dynamics. This paper identifies policy rules robust to the open economy inflation targeters face in...

We test for evidence of asymmetric behaviour in the monetary policy reaction functions of the central banks of Australia and New Zealand. For the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, we found little evidence of asymmetric behaviour, whereas the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) appears to react more...

This paper quantifies the costs of mitigating exchange rate volatility within the context of a flexible inflation targeting central bank. Within a standard linear-quadratic formulation of inflation targeting, we append a term that penalises deviations in the exchange rate to the central bank's...