Inflation Targeting and Credibility: A Note on the Recent Empirical Literature

This paper surveys the empirical literature assessing the credibility of monetary policy inside an inflation targeting regime. A basic distinction is drawn between contributions relying on indirect or direct approaches. Whereas the former group of studies exhibits a common drawback, the latter appears better suited to provide a quantitative assessment about the credibility effects associated with this policy rule. Drawing on the existing literature, we outline a promising direction for future research, based on an extension of Svensson (1994) “simplest test” of inflation target credibility inside a Bayesian econometric framework.