Monetary policy is typically undertaken with an eye to achieving a select few objectives in the long run. The Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy to promote two long-run goals: price stability and sustainable economic growth. In many other countries, central banks have a single long-run...

Low inflation over long periods is the sign of an effective central bank. The authors suggest that a large fraction of the worldwide decline in inflation since the early 1980s results from an international movement toward more independent central banks.

Central banks have done a very impressive job of achieving low and stable rates of inflation in recent years. But despite past successes, they must always be ready to deal with new challenges that might arise. Sandra Pianalto, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, discusses...

We calculate optimal monetary policy rules for several variants of a simple optimizing model of the monetary transmission mechanism with sticky prices and/or wages. We show that robustly optimal rules can be represented by interest-rate feedback rules that generalize the celebrated proposal of...