Tag Archives: Inflation targeting

One more time for the world: There is no simple relationship (if any) between Taylor-rule coefficients and policy preferences

The lack of a relationship between the size of the coefficients in a Taylor rule for monetary policy conduct and the underlying preferences for stabilization of macroeconomic goals is well known. I often have it as a check subject in my exams in monetary economics. When I present the result to students first time—it is fleshed out in Lars Svensson’s “Inflation Forecast Targeting: Implementing and Monitoring Inflation Targets” (European Economic Review 41, 1997, 1111-1141) for a simple backward-looking IS/AS model—I often state that many tend to overlook this, and that it is a common misconception that, e.g., a relatively high coefficient on the output gap in the rule indicates a … Continue reading

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Fed “Fan Charts”

I recently wrote that USA had now entered the club of inflation targeting banks. This occurred when the Federal Reserve in April last year officially started mentioning an explicit inflation target, and also introduced press conferences after its policy meetings. Thereby, central criteria for being considered an inflation targeter were met. Following its January 25 meeting, the Fed initiated immediate publication of projections for the paths for main macroeconomic indicators (they have been available at least since October 2007 in slightly different style, but then along with the minutes of meetings which are published three weeks after the policy decision). The projections are presented along with “confidence bands,” in a … Continue reading

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“Hi Mom”: Ben Goes Inflation Targeting

I know. This is a VERY late post. I am going to write a few remarks about something that happened 2 1/2 weeks ago. Old news. Nevertheless, big events deserve a comment even after a while. In the April 27 video above, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is seen in a press conference following the FOMC’s decision to keep the Fed funds rate unchanged within its 0-0.25% zone. What makes this of significance is that it, as I see it, marks the moment where the United States officially enters the group of inflation-targeting countries. He explicitly mentions two percent (or a “bit less”) as the average inflation rate consistent with … Continue reading

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Gavin Davies on the Fed and the ECB

Gavin Davies has an interesting post on his Financial Times blog. It is entitled “Strange bedfellows – the Fed and the ECB” and it discusses the co-movements between the Federal funds rate and the Deutschmark/Euro policy rate since 1987. There seems to be a leader-follower pattern, in the sense that Europe has followed the Fed with a 6-12 month lag. Davies concludes that this “is one of the most well established rules in the analysis of monetary policy making“. This is perhaps a somewhat strong statement, and I would, based on visual inspection (upon which one should be VERY careful), conjecture that most of this correlation is driven by the … Continue reading

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Sveriges Riksbank raises rates again; Svensson dissents again

Yesterday, Sveriges Riksbank (central bank of Sweden) announced that it raised the main policy rate to 1.5%. This is the fifth consecutive 25 basis point increase since last summer. It also marks the twelfth time in a row that Executive Board Member, and Deputy Governor of the Bank, Lars Svensson dissents by voting for a looser stance (in this case he advocated an unchanged rate). The last time he agreed with an interest rate decision was in February 2009. The Inflation-Targeting Riksbank makes all this information publicly available on their web site (see the voting records here). This high degree of transparency is not uncommon among inflation targeting central banks, … Continue reading

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