Recently in this journal, Gonçalves and Carvalho (2009) concluded that inflation targeters were able to bring inflation down at less cost than nontargeters (p. 242). This comment shows that their conclusion is not robust, but instead is the result of comparing a particular subset of IT...

We use a multivariate synthetic control method that matches the price and output dynamics jointly to evaluate the effects of the inflation targeting regime (IT) on the inflation and output growth of its early adopters (the ITers) – New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and...