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.


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.


Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks

Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks

Author: Davide Debortoli

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2017-07-21

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13: 1484311752

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Yes, it makes a lot of sense. This paper studies how to design simple loss functions for central banks, as parsimonious approximations to social welfare. We show, both analytically and quantitatively, that simple loss functions should feature a high weight on measures of economic activity, sometimes even larger than the weight on inflation. Two main factors drive our result. First, stabilizing economic activity also stabilizes other welfare relevant variables. Second, the estimated model features mitigated inflation distortions due to a low elasticity of substitution between monopolistic goods and a low interest rate sensitivity of demand. The result holds up in the presence of measurement errors, with large shocks that generate a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and resource utilization, and also when ensuring a low probability of hitting the zero lower bound on interest rates.


Optimal Monetary Policy under Uncertainty, Second Edition

Optimal Monetary Policy under Uncertainty, Second Edition

Author: Richard T. Froyen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1784717193

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This book provides a thorough survey of the model-based literature on optimal monetary in a stochastic setting. The survey begins with the literature of the 1970s which focused on the information problem in policy design and extends to the New Keynesian approach of the 1990s which centered on evaluating alternative targeting strategies. New to the second edition is consideration of research since the world financial crisis on the role of financial markets and institutions in the conduct of monetary policy.


Central Banking in Theory and Practice

Central Banking in Theory and Practice

Author: Alan S. Blinder

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999-01-07

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 9780262522601

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Alan S. Blinder offers the dual perspective of a leading academic macroeconomist who served a stint as Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board—one who practiced what he had long preached and then returned to academia to write about it. He tells central bankers how they might better incorporate academic knowledge and thinking into the conduct of monetary policy, and he tells scholars how they might reorient their research to be more attuned to reality and thus more useful to central bankers. Based on the 1996 Lionel Robbins Lectures, this readable book deals succinctly, in a nontechnical manner, with a wide variety of issues in monetary policy. The book also includes the author's suggested solution to an age-old problem in monetary theory: what it means for monetary policy to be "neutral."


The Great Inflation

The Great Inflation

Author: Michael D. Bordo

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0226066959

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Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policy makers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity. This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and ’80s, which saw rising inflation in many nations, and which propelled interest rates across the developing world into the double digits. In the decades since, the immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation has been the subject of considerable debate. Among the areas of contention are the role of monetary policy in driving inflation and the implications this had both for policy design and for evaluating the performance of those who set the policy. Here, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on the ways in which the lessons of the Great Inflation were absorbed and applied to today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.


Monetary Policy Rules

Monetary Policy Rules

Author: John B. Taylor

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 0226791262

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This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.


Monetary Policy Strategy

Monetary Policy Strategy

Author: Frederic S. Mishkin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 0262134829

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This book by a leading authority on monetary policy offers a unique view of the subject from the perspectives of both scholar and practitioner. Frederic Mishkin is not only an academic expert in the field but also a high-level policymaker. He is especially well positioned to discuss the changes in the conduct of monetary policy in recent years, in particular the turn to inflation targeting. Monetary Policy Strategydescribes his work over the last ten years, offering published papers, new introductory material, and a summing up, "Everything You Wanted to Know about Monetary Policy Strategy, But Were Afraid to Ask," which reflects on what we have learned about monetary policy over the last thirty years. Mishkin blends theory, econometric evidence, and extensive case studies of monetary policy in advanced and emerging market and transition economies. Throughout, his focus is on these key areas: the importance of price stability and a nominal anch fiscal and financial preconditions for achieving price stability; central bank independence as an additional precondition; central bank accountability; the rationale for inflation targeting; the optimal inflation target; central bank transparency and communication; and the role of asset prices in monetary policy.


Monetary Policy under Uncertainty

Monetary Policy under Uncertainty

Author: Oliver Sauter

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2014-01-31

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 365804974X

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Oliver Sauter analyzes three aspects of monetary policy under uncertainty. First he shows that the terms risk and uncertainty are often wrongly used as synonyms despite their different meanings. The second aspect is the proper examination and incorporation of uncertainty into a monetary policy framework. The author undertakes systematization with a closer look at each identified form of uncertainty. Thirdly, he focuses on the quantification of uncertainty from two different perspectives, either from a market perspective or from a central bank perspective.