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Targeting Rules vs. Instrument Rules for Monetary Policy: What is Wrong with McCallum and Nelson?

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Author Info
Lars E.O. Svensson

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Abstract

McCallum and Nelson's (2004) criticism of targeting rules for the analysis of monetary policy is rebutted. First, McCallum and Nelson's preference to study the robustness of simple monetary-policy rules is no reason at all to limit attention to simple instrument rules; simple targeting rules may have more desirable properties. Second, optimal targeting rules are a compact, robust, and structural description of goal-directed monetary policy, analogous to the compact, robust, and structural consumption Euler conditions in the theory of consumption. They express the very robust condition of equality of the marginal rates of substitution and transformation between the central bank's target variables. Third, under realistic information assumptions, the instrument-rule analogue to any targeting rule that McCallum and Nelson have proposed results in very large instrument-rate volatility and is also for other reasons inferior to a targeting rule.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10747.

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Date of creation: Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10747

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

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  27. 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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Full references

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. James Bullard & Eric Schaling, 2006. "Monetary policy, determinacy, and learnability in the open economy," Working Paper Series 611, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Herings P. Jean-Jacques & Peeters Ronald & Yang Michael S., 2009. "Piracy on the internet: Accommodate it or fight it? A dynamic approach," Research Memoranda 034, Maastricht : METEOR, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization. [Downloadable!]
  3. Lars E O Svensson, 2005. "Monetary Policy with Judgment: Forecast Targeting," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Kenneth N Kuttner, 2004. "A Snapshot of Inflation Targeting in its Adolescence," RBA Annual Conference Volume, in: Christopher Kent & Simon Guttmann (ed.), The Future of Inflation Targeting Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  5. Bianca De Paoli, 2004. "Monetary Policy and Welfare in a Small Open Economy," CEP Discussion Papers dp0639, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. James B. Bullard & Eric Schaling, 2006. "Monetary policy, determinacy, and learnability in a two-block world economy," Working Papers 2006-038, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
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