Studies of inflation targeting make the distinction between strict and flexible inflation targeting. The problem of strict inflation targeting has so far been analysed by treating it as a special case of a standard optimal control problem and the algorithms used have not provided an exact solution. This paper presents a formal solution to the problem of strict inflation targeting in a economy w...

We study the welfare cost of inflation in a general equilibrium life cycle model with growth, costly financial intermediation, and taxes on nominal quantities. We find a stationary equilibrium of the model matches a wide variety of facts about the postwar U.S. economy. We then calculate that the inflation policy of the monetary authority has welfare consequences for agents that are an order of ...

The justification for inflation targeting rests on three core propositions. The first is called ‘lean against the wind’, which refers to fact that the monetary authority contracts (expands) aggregate demand below capacity when the actual rate of inflation is above (below) target. The second is ‘the divine coincidence’, which means that stabilizing the rate of inflation around its target is tant...

This paper deals with a “new” type of monetary policy making: Inflation Targeting (IT). It attempts to identify reasons for which countries might be inclined to adopt this framework for monetary policy. By reviewing recent experience of inflation targeting countries, the paper outlines the major operational arguments regarding the implementation of IT. Another important issue is the applicabili...

This paper studies the implications of certain kinds of uncertainty for monetary policy. It first describes the optimum policy rule in a simple model of the transmission mechanism as in Ball and Svensson. It then examines how this rule ought to be modified when there is uncertainty about the parameters, about the time lags, or about the nature of shocks. The paper also discusses the case of a s...

Inflation targeting needs to be supplemented by an economic growth target so that central banks will not adopt monetary policy which results in stagnation. There is no guarantee that the economy will move towards full employment by itself when the inflation rate is kept between two to three per cent. Monetary policy does not have a comparative advantage in achieving price stability. Svensson's ...