One way to analyze the impact of commodity price shocks on monetary policy is to think about short-term interest rates set by the Federal Reserve (Fed) according to the Taylor rule. Taylor (1993) suggested a policy reaction function for moderating short-term interest rates to achieve the...

Many central banks release inflation forecasts to reduce uncertainty; at the same time, an increasing number rely on a publicly stated medium-term inflation target to help anchor expectations. We examine how the adoption of an inflation target (IT) by a major central bank, the Bank of Japan...

In a survey of more than 600 economists, most respondents prefer their central bank to have an explicit inflation target. Roughly half want the central bank to keep its current target. Two thirds of the rest want to raise the target, with a median preferred change of one percentage point. In a...

This paper presents a welfare analysis of a desirable Inflation Targeting Policy in order to achieve price stabilization and an efficient level of output under a deflationary economy. Concretely, we present a general model that can treat the components of a Inflation Targeting Policy, such as...

Inflation targeting has become the most popular and widely discussed policy framework in the contemporary monetary policy practice. The success of inflation targeting has been proved by a number of advanced and emerging countries and hence, most of the monetary authorities around the globe have...

I compare nominal GDP level targeting to flexible inflation targeting in a small New Keynesian model subject to the zero lower bound on nominal policy rates. First, I study the performance of optimal discretionary policies. I find that, for a standard calibration, inflation targeting under...

While two strands of the literature suggest that PPI inflation, in addition to or instead of CPI inflation, should be a targeting variable in a monetary policy rule, the distinction between the two is only important when they do not co-move strongly. Our first contribution is to document that...

We address the question in this paper's title using an estimated New Keynesian DSGE model of the euro area with trend inflation, imperfect indexation, and a lower bound on the nominal interest rate. In this setup, a decrease in the steady-state real interest rate, r*, increases the probability...

We evaluate and compare alternative monetary policy rules, namely average inflation targeting, price level targeting, and traditional inflation targeting rules, in a standard New Keynesian model that features recurring, transient zero lower bound regimes. We use determinacy and expectational...