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Learning and optimal monetary policy

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Author Info
Richard Dennis
Federico Ravenna

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Abstract

To conduct policy efficiently, central banks must use available data to infer, or learn, the relevant structural relationships in the economy. However, because a central bank's policy affects economic outcomes, the chosen policy may help or hinder its efforts to learn. This paper examines whether real-time learning allows a central bank to learn the economy's underlying structure and studies the impact that learning has on the performance of optimal policies under a variety of learning environments. Our main results are as follows. First, when monetary policy is formulated as an optimal discretionary targeting rule, we find that the rational expectations equilibrium and the optimal policy are real-time learnable. This result is robust to a range of assumptions concerning private sector learning behavior. Second, when policy is set with discretion, learning can lead to outcomes that are better than if the model parameters are known. Finally, if the private sector is learning, then unannounced changes to the policy regime, particularly changes to the inflation target, can raise policy loss considerably.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in its series Working Paper Series with number 2007-19.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2007-19

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Keywords: Monetary policy;

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This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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  2. Wieland, Volker, 2000. "Learning by doing and the value of optimal experimentation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 501-534, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2006. "Inflation targeting under imperfect knowledge," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2006-20, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  4. Clarida, Richard & Galí, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 2139, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Evans, George W & Honkapohja, Seppo, 2002. "Monetary Policy, Expectations and Commitment," CEPR Discussion Papers 3434, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Ball, Laurence, 1999. "Efficient Rules for Monetary Policy," International Finance, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 2(1), pages 63-83, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Rotemberg, Julio J, 1982. "Monopolistic Price Adjustment and Aggregate Output," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(4), pages 517-31, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "Inflation dynamics: A structural econometric analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 195-222, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Lars E. O. Svensson, 1997. "Inflation Forecast Targeting: Implementing and Monitoring Inflation Targets," NBER Working Papers 5797, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Marcet, Albert & Sargent, Thomas J., 1989. "Convergence of least squares learning mechanisms in self-referential linear stochastic models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 337-368, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Bullard, James & Mitra, Kaushik, 2002. "Learning about monetary policy rules," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1105-1129, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Frank Smets & Rafael Wouters, 2002. "An estimated stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model of the euro area," Working Paper Series 171, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
  13. Tetlow, Robert J. & von zur Muehlen, Peter, 2001. "Simplicity versus optimality: The choice of monetary policy rules when agents must learn," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 245-279, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Amato, Jeffery D. & Laubach, Thomas, 2004. "Implications of habit formation for optimal monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 305-325, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
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  16. Andrew Levin & Volker Wieland & John C. Williams, 2003. "The Performance of Forecast-Based Monetary Policy Rules under Model Uncertainty," CFS Working Paper Series 2003/06, Center for Financial Studies. [Downloadable!]
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  17. Carl E.Walsh, 2005. "Parameter misspecification and robust monetary policy rules," Working Paper Series 477, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
  18. Dennis, Richard & Soderstrom, Ulf, 2006. "How Important Is Precommitment for Monetary Policy?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(4), pages 847-872, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. George W. Evans & Seppo Honkapohja, 2003. "Adaptive learning and monetary policy design," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 1045-1084.
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  20. George W. Evans & Seppo Honkapohja, 2003. "Expectations and the Stability Problem for Optimal Monetary Policies," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 70(4), pages 807-824, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Ferrero, Giuseppe, 2007. "Monetary policy, learning and the speed of convergence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 3006-3041, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  22. Timothy Cogley & Thomas J. Sargent, 2005. "The conquest of U.S. inflation: learning and robustness to model uncertainty," Working Paper Series 478, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  23. Marc P. Giannoni & Michael Woodford, 2003. "Optimal Inflation Targeting Rules," NBER Working Papers 9939, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  24. McCallum, Bennett T. & Nelson, Edward, 1999. "Nominal income targeting in an open-economy optimizing model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 553-578, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Dennis, Richard, 2007. "Optimal Policy In Rational Expectations Models: New Solution Algorithms," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(01), pages 31-55, February. [Downloadable!]
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  26. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-91, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  27. Vitor Gaspar & Frank Smets & David Vestin, 2006. "Optimal Monetary Policy under Adaptive Learning," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 183, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Richard Dennis, 2007. "Model uncertainty and monetary policy," Working Paper Series 2007-09, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. George W. Evans & Seppo Honkapohja, 2008. "Expectations, Learning, And Monetary Policy: An Overview Of Recent Research," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 501, Central Bank of Chile. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Brzoza-Brzezina, Michal & Kot, Adam, 2008. "The Relativity Theory Revisited: Is Publishing Interest Rate Forecasts Really so Valuable?," MPRA Paper 10296, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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