In this paper, I consider the lessons recent academic research and historical experiences with monetary targeting and inflation targeting offer for the design of monetary policy regimes. The practical experiences with both monetary and inflation targeting suggest that successful policies have incorporated a great deal of flexibility. In principle, both monetary targeting and inflation targeting...

Estimated, calibrated, and optimal interest rate rules are examined for their ability to dampen economic fluctuations caused by random shocks. A tax rate rule is also considered. The results show that the estimated interest rate rule used in the paper is stable for the period beginning in 1954 except for the early Volcker period, although more observations, especially high inflation ones, are n...

This is the first study to attempt to explain income inequality using unemployment and inflation and international cross-sectional data. Using a SURE system, inflation is found to have an increasing impact on the shares of the lower 80% of the income distribution, while reducing the share of the highest 20%. Unemployment has a negative effect on the share of the first 40%, while increases the s...

Oil price shocks are the main source of macroeconomic fluctuations in oil exporting countries. It is believed that appropriate monetary policy can help to stabilize these unwanted variations toward optimal allocations. A stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model featuring the properties of both cost push and wealth effect transmission channels is developed for the Iranian economy. In thi...

The paper shows that Liquidity Deflation, a liquidity-drainage mechanism associated with Safe Asset Shortage, helps to rationalize supply-side liquidity trap and involuntary unemployment under wage/price flexibility, especially in economies that suffered massive liquidity destruction, like advanced economies in the wake of the Lehman crisis. Moreover, Liquidity Deflation is shown to imply defla...

In this paper, stochastic simulations of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s new macroeconomic model, FPS, are used to examine the issue of which price index should monetary policy stabilise in a small open economy. Under the class of policy rules considered, targeting a measure of domestic inflation, which does not include the direct effects of exchange rate movements on the price of imported go...

Should inflation targeting involve some leaning against the wind? Sweden provides a case study, since the Riksbank has been leaning against the wind quite aggressively since 2010, stating concerns about risks associated with household indebtedness. The cost is high of this policy, in the form of inflation much below the target and a higher unemployment, arguably as much 1.2 percentage points hi...

It is quite difficult to assess the benefits of inflation targeting (IT) since its immediate effect will be on inflation expectations, an unobserved variable. Due to lack of comprehensive data on inflation expectations, most studies so far concentrated on the impact of IT either on observable variables like output, unemployment, and inflation or compared post-IT surveys of IT countries with non...

Medium-term price stability is widely accepted as the appropriate ultimate goal for monetary policy. This reflects two ideas. The first is that high rates of inflation distort decision-making, ultimately leading to slower economic growth. The second is that monetary policy is the most effective instrument in influencing medium-term inflation outcomes. By pursuing a strategy that ensures that in...

The fact that U.S. inflation has been remarkably low and stable over the past two decades prompts questions as to whether or not inflation persistence has changed to a lower level too. This paper employs the recently developed structural stability test with multiple regime shifts to model U.S. inflation dynamics over the past half century. Our empirical results suggest that the persistence of i...