We reconsider the optimal central banker contract derived in Walsh (1995). We show that if the government's objective function places weight (value) on the cost of the contract, then the optimal inflation contract does not completely neutralize the inflation bias. Furthermore, the more concerned...

We investigate inflation persistence in six inflation targeting (IT) countries from the global-economy perspective. This view maintains that inflation persistence in IT countries has declined mainly because of the decline of inflation persistence in the global economy. We provide empirical...

This paper reports a two-stage analysis of inflation persistence using monthly data from 11 IT countries and, for comparison, the US, a non IT country with a history of credible monetary policy. First, we estimate inflation persistence in a rolling-window fractional integration setting using the...

The lag in effect of monetary policy contains vital information for the policy evaluation. Allowing for a time-varying treatment effect, we show that inflation targeting effectively lowers inflation for both developed and developing countries. Developed countries reach their targets rapidly with...

The paper studies the dynamic nature of optimal solutions under commitment in Barro-Gordon and new-Keynesian models and, finds two interesting parameters - the implied targets and the persistence parameter that governs the adjustment toward the implied targets. The implied targets generally...