Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality

Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality

Author: Jonathan Benchimol

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2019-08-02

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 1498324584

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The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia regarding the output gap, revenue, or interest rate. To the extent that bygones are not bygones under price level targeting, rational inflation expectations is a minimal condition for optimality in a behavioral world. Instrument rules implementation of this optimal policy is shown to be infeasible, questioning the ability of simple rules à la Taylor (1993) to assist the conduct of monetary policy. Bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with welfare losses.


Robustness

Robustness

Author: Lars Peter Hansen

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-06-28

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0691170975

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The standard theory of decision making under uncertainty advises the decision maker to form a statistical model linking outcomes to decisions and then to choose the optimal distribution of outcomes. This assumes that the decision maker trusts the model completely. But what should a decision maker do if the model cannot be trusted? Lars Hansen and Thomas Sargent, two leading macroeconomists, push the field forward as they set about answering this question. They adapt robust control techniques and apply them to economics. By using this theory to let decision makers acknowledge misspecification in economic modeling, the authors develop applications to a variety of problems in dynamic macroeconomics. Technical, rigorous, and self-contained, this book will be useful for macroeconomists who seek to improve the robustness of decision-making processes.


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.


Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality

Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality

Author: Jonathan Benchimol

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2019-08-02

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 1513511343

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The form of bounded rationality characterizing the representative agent is key in the choice of the optimal monetary policy regime. While inflation targeting prevails for myopia that distorts agents' inflation expectations, price level targeting emerges as the optimal policy under myopia regarding the output gap, revenue, or interest rate. To the extent that bygones are not bygones under price level targeting, rational inflation expectations is a minimal condition for optimality in a behavioral world. Instrument rules implementation of this optimal policy is shown to be infeasible, questioning the ability of simple rules à la Taylor (1993) to assist the conduct of monetary policy. Bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with welfare losses.


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.


Handbook of Monetary Economics 3A

Handbook of Monetary Economics 3A

Author:

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2010-12-08

Total Pages: 754

ISBN-13: 0080932703

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What tools are available for setting and analyzing monetary policy? World-renowned contributors examine recent evidence on subjects as varied as price-setting, inflation persistence, the private sector's formation of inflation expectations, and the monetary policy transmission mechanism. Stopping short of advocating conclusions about the ideal conduct of policy, the authors focus instead on analytical methods and the changing interactions among the ingredients and properties that inform monetary models. The influences between economic performance and monetary policy regimes can be both grand and muted, and this volume clarifies the present state of this continually evolving relationship. - Explores the models and practices used in formulating and transmitting monetary policies - Raises new questions about the volume, price, and availability of credit in the 2007-2010 downturn - Questions fiscal-monetary connnections and encourages new thinking about the business cycle itself - Observes changes in the formulation of monetary policies over the last 25 years


NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003

NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003

Author: Mark Gertler

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780262572217

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The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents pioneering work in macroeconomics by leading academic researchers to an audience of public policymakers and the academic community. Each commissioned paper is followed by comments and discussion. This year's edition provides a mix of cutting-edge research and policy analysis on such topics as productivity and information technology, the increase in wealth inequality, behavioral economics, and inflation.


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.


Monetary Policy Strategies

Monetary Policy Strategies

Author: International Monetary Fund

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 1988-10-04

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 1451952570

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The paper considers the merits of rules and discretion for monetary policy when the structure of the macroeconomic model and the probability distributions of disturbances are not well defined. It is argued that when it is costly to delay policy reactions to seldom-experienced shocks until formal algorithmic learning has been accomplished, and when time consistency problems are significant, a mixed strategy that combines a simple verifiable rule with discretion is attractive. The paper also discusses mechanisms for mitigating credibility problems and emphasizes that arguments against various types of simple rules lose their force under a mixed strategy.


Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle

Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle

Author: Jordi Galí

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-06-09

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1400866278

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The classic introduction to the New Keynesian economic model This revised second edition of Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle provides a rigorous graduate-level introduction to the New Keynesian framework and its applications to monetary policy. The New Keynesian framework is the workhorse for the analysis of monetary policy and its implications for inflation, economic fluctuations, and welfare. A backbone of the new generation of medium-scale models under development at major central banks and international policy institutions, the framework provides the theoretical underpinnings for the price stability–oriented strategies adopted by most central banks in the industrialized world. Using a canonical version of the New Keynesian model as a reference, Jordi Galí explores various issues pertaining to monetary policy's design, including optimal monetary policy and the desirability of simple policy rules. He analyzes several extensions of the baseline model, allowing for cost-push shocks, nominal wage rigidities, and open economy factors. In each case, the effects on monetary policy are addressed, with emphasis on the desirability of inflation-targeting policies. New material includes the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates and an analysis of unemployment’s significance for monetary policy. The most up-to-date introduction to the New Keynesian framework available A single benchmark model used throughout New materials and exercises included An ideal resource for graduate students, researchers, and market analysts