In recent years, central bankers throughout the world have advocated that monetary policy shift toward inflation targeting. Recent actions in the U.S. serve to highlight the desire of the Federal Reserve to keep inflation both low and stable, while downplaying the likely output and employment...

This paper investigates the statistical properties of the U.S. sacrifice ratio--the cumulative output loss arising from a permanent reduction in inflation. We derive estimates of the sacrifice ratio from three structural VAR models and then conduct Monte Carlo simulations to analyze their...

Although Caribbean countries have been largely successful in bringing annual inflation down to single digits in recent years-regardless of their exchange rate regime-their growth rates have been disappointing and their public debt has risen rapidly. By 2003, 14 of 15 Caribbean countries ranked...