Pricing Policies and Inflation Inertia
Pricing Policies and Inflation Inertia

Author: Mr.Michael Kumhof

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2003-04-01

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 1451851049

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This paper provides a monetary model with nominal rigidities that differs from the conventional New Keynesian model with firms setting pricing policies instead of price levels. In response to permanent or highly persistent monetary policy shocks this model generates the empirically observed slow (inertial) and prolonged (persistent) reaction of the inflation rate, and also the recession that typically accompanies moderate disinflations. The reason is that firms respond to such shocks mostly through a change in the long-run or inflation updating component of their pricing policies. With staggered pricing policies there is a time lag before this is reflected in aggregate inflation.

The Inflation-Targeting Debate
The Inflation-Targeting Debate

Author: Ben S. Bernanke

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0226044734

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Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain. In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.

Interest and Prices
Interest and Prices

Author: Michael Woodford

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-12-12

Total Pages: 805

ISBN-13: 1400830168

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With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account? Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate. The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

Inflation Expectations
Inflation Expectations

Author: Peter J. N. Sinclair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1135179778

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Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Asset Prices and Monetary Policy
Asset Prices and Monetary Policy

Author: John Y. Campbell

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-11-15

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0226092127

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Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction of central banks, asset markets, and the general economy to forge a new understanding of the challenges facing policy makers as they manage an increasingly complex economic system. The contributors examine how central bankers determine their policy prescriptions with reference to the fluctuating housing market, the balance of debt and credit, changing beliefs of investors, the level of commodity prices, and other factors. At a time when the public has never been more involved in stocks, retirement funds, and real estate investment, this insightful book will be useful to all those concerned with the current state of the economy.

The Israeli Economy
The Israeli Economy

Author: Yoram Ben-Porath

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780674468788

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Research papers on economic conditions in Israel - considers population growth and its role in economic growth; covers structural changes in economic structure and industrial structure, capital investment, relationships between educational level and wage differentials, public expenditure on defence and public services, income redistribution, taxation, etc.; examines balance of payments and energy problems, the system of cost of living allowance, and dynamics of inflation; includes economic policy suggestions. Graphs, references, statistical tables.

Inflation Inertia and Credible Disinflation
Inflation Inertia and Credible Disinflation

Author: Guillermo A. Calvo

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13:

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This paper develops a model of inflation inertia based on optimizing forward looking staggered price setting in a small open economy. Unlike in current models of sticky prices, transitions to a lower steady state inflation rate take time even if they are fully credible, and they are associated with significant output losses. There is a welfare trade-off between these output losses and the gains from smaller inflationary distortions. For reasonable parameter values inflation stabilization improves welfare. The optimal steady state is reached at the Friedman rule. Technical appendices are available at www.nber.org/data-appendix/w9557/ inert-techapp.pdf.

Why Inflation Targeting?
Why Inflation Targeting?

Author: Charles Freedman

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2009-04-01

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13: 145187233X

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This is the second chapter of a forthcoming monograph entitled "On Implementing Full-Fledged Inflation-Targeting Regimes: Saying What You Do and Doing What You Say." We begin by discussing the costs of inflation, including their role in generating boom-bust cycles. Following a general discussion of the need for a nominal anchor, we describe a specific type of monetary anchor, the inflation-targeting regime, and its two key intellectual roots-the absence of long-run trade-offs and the time-inconsistency problem. We conclude by providing a brief introduction to the way in which inflation targeting works.

Inflation
Inflation

Author: Robert E. Hall

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0226313255

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This volume presents the latest thoughts of a brilliant group of young economists on one of the most persistent economic problems facing the United States and the world, inflation. Rather than attempting an encyclopedic effort or offering specific policy recommendations, the contributors have emphasized the diagnosis of problems and the description of events that economists most thoroughly understand. Reflecting a dozen diverse views—many of which challenge established orthodoxy—they illuminate the economic and political processes involved in this important issue.