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Robust Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge

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Author Info
John C Williams
Athanasios Orphanides () (Division of Monetary Affairs Federal Reserve Board)

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Abstract

We examine the performance and robustness properties of monetary policy rules in an estimated macroeconomic model in which the economy undergoes structural change and where private agents and the central bank possess imperfect knowledge about the true structure of the economy. Private agents rely on an adaptive learning technology to form expectations and update their beliefs based on incoming data. Policymakers follow an interest rate rule aiming to maintain price stability and to minimize fluctuations of unemployment around its natural rate but are uncertain about the economy's natural rates of interest and unemployment. We show that in this environment the scope for economic stabilization is significantly reduced relative to an economy under rational expectations with perfect knowledge. Furthermore, policies that would be optimal under perfect knowledge can perform very poorly when knowledge is imperfect. Efficient policies that take account of private learning and misperceptions of natural rates call for more aggressive responses to inflation that would be optimal under perfect knowledge. We show that such policies not only improve performance in our baseline model, but are also quite robust to potential misspecification of private sector learning and the magnitude of variation in natural rates.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Society for Computational Economics in its series Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 with number 400.

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Date of creation: 11 Nov 2005
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Handle: RePEc:sce:scecf5:400

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Related research
Keywords: Monetary policy natural rate misperceptions rational expectations learning

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

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.:

  1. Bennett T. McCallum, 2001. "Should Monetary Policy Respond Strongly to Output Gaps?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 258-262, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C, 2005. "Inflation Scares and Forecast-Based Monetary Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 4844, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Mccallum, Bennet T., 1988. "Robustness properties of a rule for monetary policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29, pages 173-203. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Taylor, John B., 1999. "The robustness and efficiency of monetary policy rules as guidelines for interest rate setting by the European central bank," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 655-679, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Vitor Gaspar & Frank Smets & David Vestin, 2006. "Adaptive Learning, Persistence, and Optimal Monetary Policy," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 376-385, 04-05. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. John C. Williams, 2003. "Simple rules for monetary policy," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-12. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Smets, Frank, 2003. "Maintaining price stability: how long is the medium term?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1293-1309, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Malcolm D. Knight & Chair, 2003. "Implications of a changing economic structure for the strategy of monetary policy," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 361-371. [Downloadable!]
  9. Athanasios Orphanides, 2003. "Historical monetary policy analysis and the Taylor rule," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-36, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  10. Dean Croushore, 1993. "Introducing: the survey of professional forecasters," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Nov, pages 3-15.
  11. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2002. "Robust monetary policy rules with unknown natural rates," Working Papers in Applied Economic Theory 2003-01, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Carl E. Walsh, 2003. "Implications of a changing economic structure for the strategy of monetary policy," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 297-348. [Downloadable!]
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  13. Cukierman, Alex & Lippi, Francesco, 2005. "Endogenous monetary policy with unobserved potential output," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1951-1983, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Croushore, Dean & Stark, Tom, 2001. "A real-time data set for macroeconomists," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 111-130, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Taylor, John B., 1993. "Discretion versus policy rules in practice," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39, pages 195-214, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Monetary policy evaluation with noisy information," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 605-631, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Leitemo, Kai & Lonning, Ingunn, 2006. "Simple Monetary Policymaking without the Output Gap," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(6), pages 1619-1640, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Athanasios Orphanides & Simon van Norden, 2002. "The Unreliability of Output-Gap Estimates in Real Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 569-583, 07. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. John C. Williams, 2005. "Robust estimation and monetary policy with unobserved structural change," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), pages 53-81. [Downloadable!]
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  20. Timothy Cogley & Thomas Sargent, . "Evolving Post-World War II U.S. Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 2132872, Department of Economics, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. [Downloadable!]
  21. Orphanides, Athanasios & Porter, Richard D. & Reifschneider, David & Tetlow, Robert & Finan, Frederico, 2000. "Errors in the measurement of the output gap and the design of monetary policy," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 117-141. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Thomas Laubach & John C. Williams, 2003. "Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 1063-1070, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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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)
  24. James Bullard & Stefano Eusepi, 2005. "Did the Great Inflation Occur Despite Policymaker Commitment to a Taylor Rule?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(2), pages 324-359, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Victor Zarnowitz & Phillip Braun, 1994. "Twenty-two Years of the NBER-ASA Quarterly Economic Outlook Surveys: Aspects and Comparisons of Forecasting Performance," NBER Working Papers 3965, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  26. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2007. "Inflation targeting under imperfect knowledge," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-23. [Downloadable!]
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  27. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "The quest for prosperity without inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 633-663, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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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. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C, 2006. "Inflation Targeting under Imperfect Knowledge," CEPR Discussion Papers 5664, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Evans , George W & Honkapohja, Seppo, 2007. "Expectations, learning and monetary policy: an overview of recent research," Research Discussion Papers 32/2007, Bank of Finland. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Mandler, Martin, 2006. "Are there gains from including monetary aggregates and stock market indices in the monetary policy reaction function? A simulation study of recent U.S. monetary policy," MPRA Paper 2318, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  4. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2008. "Learning, expectations formation and the pitfalls of optimal control monetary policy," Working Paper Series 2008-05, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. [Downloadable!]
  5. Keiko Honjo & Ben Hunt, 2006. "Stabilizing Inflation in Iceland," IMF Working Papers 06/262, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  6. Alan S. Blinder & Ricardo Reis, 2005. "Understanding the Greenspan standard," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 11-96. [Downloadable!]
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