The paper discusses several issues related to how monetary policy should be conducted in an era of price stability. Low inflation (with base drift in the price level) and price-level stability (wihtout such base drift) are compared, and a suitable loss function (corresponding to flexible...

This paper explores an issue that arises in the delegation process. The paper shows that a myopic central banker, one who treats expectations as constant in setting discretionary policy, can replicate the behavior of output and inflation under policy from a timeless perspective. For that to...

Macro models generally assume away heterogeneous welfare in assessing policies. We investigate here within two aggregative models - one with a representative agent, the other a long-used forecasting model of the UK - whether allowing for differences in welfare functions (specifically between...

This paper examines the implications of adaptive learning in the New Keynesian benchmark model extended with inflation indexation to capture inflation persistence. First, we show that the price level will be stationary and follow an AR(2) process. Next, we study under which circumstances the...

Contrary to Sargent and Wallace (1975), a central bank’s use of an interest-rate instrument does determine prices when the central bank pursues either a short-term or long-term price target. However, in order for a central bank’s pursuit of a long-term price target to be credible, the public...