Of Nutters and Doves

Under a large degree of extrinsic inflation persistence, there is a strong yet simple case for inflation targeting even if we are uncertain about many other dimensions of the economy. If inflation persistence is high and driven by extrinsic sources, even an excessively strict inflation-targeting regime is preferable to full policy discretion. Our result is entirely built on stabilization policy: long-run inflation rates are optimal under full policy discretion in our model. It is instead the medium-term dynamics of inflation expectations that render the policy response under discretion worse than inaction.

NOMINAL GDP TARGETING AND CENTRAL BANK CONSERVATIVENESS

In the literature on monetary economics, there is the ‘inflationary bias’ result which predicts that the rate of inflation will be biased towards a higher level under discretionary monetary policy than under a rule‐based policy regime. It is established that a credible nominal target can eliminate this ‘inflationary bias’. In this paper, we examine the case of nominal GDP targeting, which is a rule‐based monetary regime. Depending on the degree of conservativeness by the central bank, we show in a stylized model the choice of different combination of inflation and real GDP targets can still result in an ‘inflationary bias’, and there also exists the possibility of a ‘dis‐inflationary bias’