Since 1991, the Bank of Canada has had an inflation‐targeting (IT) framework established by a joint agreement between the Bank and the Government of Canada. The framework is reviewed every five years as part of the process for renewing the inflation‐control agreement. This discussion paper...

The inability of central banks to attain their target inflation rates in recent years has raised questions about the extent to which central banks can control the inflation process. This paper discusses the evolution of thought and evidence since the 1960s on the determinants of inflation and...

Rising public debt everywhere has raised the question of how to reduce debt again in the future. High public debt also seems to be an impediment for the exit of central banks from ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing. Historical precedents and proposals have included austerity,...

Inflation has started to increase, and the return of inflation comes at a time in which economies begin to recover from pandemic-induced and lockdown-induced recessions. This raises questions about how much and how long inflation will go up as well as about whether central banks have to step-up...

Mit altgedienten Sprachbildern sollte man sparsam umgehen. Und doch: Die von Jerome Powell, dem Chef der Federal Reserve (Fed), unlängst vorgeschlagene zukünftige Zielzone für Inflationsraten, möglicherweise verbunden mit einer Anhebung der durchschnittlichen, von der Fed angestrebten...

A fiscal deficit of 8.5% of GDP, limited access to credit locally and internationally, country risk premiums at default levels and money supply growing at 80% annually, have led some analysts to predict that Argentina might be heading into a "3-digit modern hyperinflation." Although this opinion...

This paper – which takes into consideration overall experience with the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) as well as the improvements made to this measure of inflation since 2003 – finds that the HICP continues to fulfil the prerequisites for the index underlying the ECB’s...

The ECB's price stability mandate has been defined by the Treaty. But the Treaty has not spelled out what price stability precisely means. To make the mandate operational, the Governing Council has provided a quantitative definition in 1998 and a clarification in 2003. The landscape has changed...

Inflation in advanced economies is low by historical standards but there is no threat of deflation. Slower economic growth is caused by supply-side constraints rather than low inflation. Below-the-target inflation does not damage the reputation of central banks. Thus, central banks should not...

This paper investigates the forward-lookingness of monetary policy related to stabilising inflation over time under different degrees of central bank credibility in the four largest Latin American economies, which experienced a different transition path to the full-fledged inflation targeting...

In the last three decades average inflation rates have declined around the world. Since 1995 the number of countries with inflation rates below 10% a year increased from 98 (54% of the total) to an average of 178 in 2015-2019 (90% of the total). In the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial...

Central bank credibility is critical for the effectiveness of monetary policy. The measures of credibility that are based on the changes in actual inflation rate do not perform very well in environments of chronic inflation. We design an alternative measure that allows us to track the evolution...

This paper examines the policy challenges that a country faces when it wants to both reduce inflation and maintain a sustainable external position. Robert Mundell's policy assignment framework suggests that these two goals may be mutually incompatible unless monetary and fiscal policies are...

This paper uses a standard New Keynesian model to analyze the effects and implementation of various monetary policy frameworks in the presence of a low natural rate of interest and a lower bound on interest rates. Under a standard inflation-targeting approach, inflation expectations will be...

This paper conducts a structural analysis of inflation persistence in the United Kingdom between 1965-2009. I allow for the possibility of shifts in the U.K. economy by estimating open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models in which parameters of a Taylor-type monetary policy...

Consider a central bank that can adjust the in ation rate by increasing and decreasing the level of the key interest rate. Each intervention gives rise to proportional costs, and the central bank faces also a running penalty, e.g., due to misaligned levels of in ation and interest rate. We model...

Policy implications are derived for an inflation-targeting central bank, whose credibility is endogenous and depends on its past ability to achieve its targets. This is done in a New Keynesian framework with heterogeneous and boundedly rational expectations. We find that the region of allowed...

A solution to marketplace information asymmetries is to have trading partners publicly rate each other post-transaction. Many have shown that these ratings are effective; we show that their effectiveness deteriorates over time. The problem is that ratings are prone to inflation, with raters...