How much discretion should the monetary authority have in setting its policy? This question is analyzed in an economy with an agreed-upon social welfare function that depends on the randomly fluctuating state of the economy. The monetary authority has private information about that state. In the...

This paper examines the welfare implications of managing Q with inflation targeting by monetary authorities who have to "learn" the laws of motion for both inflation and the rate of growth of Q. Our results show that the Central Bank can achieve great success in reducing the volatility of GDP...

In two recent papers, Jensen (2002) and Walsh (2003), using a hybrid New Keynesian model, demonstrate that a regime that targets either nominal income growth or the change in the output gap can effectively replicate the outcome under commitment and hence reduce the size of the stabilization...

The authors compute welfare-maximizing Taylor rules in a dynamic general-equilibrium model of a small open economy. The model includes three types of nominal rigidities (domestic-goods prices, imported-goods prices, and wages) and eight different structural shocks. The authors estimate the...

JEL Classification: E31, E52, E58, E61

This paper derives optimal monetary policy rules in setups where certainty equivalence does not hold because either central bank preferences are not quadratic, and/or the aggregate supply relation is nonlinear. Analytical results show that these features lead to sign and size asymmetries, and...

This paper derives optimal monetary policy rules in setups where certainty equivalence does not hold because either central bank preferences are not quadratic, and/or the aggregate supply relation is nonlinear. Analytical results show that these features lead to sign and size asymmetries, and...

On 28-29 March 2003, the BIS held a conference on "Monetary stability, financial stability and the business cycle". This event brought together central bankers, academics and market participants to exchange views on this issue (see the conference programme and list of participants in this...

We show that the optimal inflation target imposed on a discretionary central bank varies with the extent of fiscal decentralization. Our analysis compares two fiscal regimes for local government bond management: the partially decentralized (PD) regime where the central government determines the...