IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/y2007imayp183-194nv.89no.3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The lower and upper bounds of the Federal Open Market Committee's long-run inflation objective

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel L. Thornton

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that the Fed can control the average inflation rate over a period of time reasonably well. Because of this and the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC's) long-standing commitment to price stability, the author argues that the FOMC has an implicit long-run inflation objective (LIO)-lower and upper bounds to the long-run inflation rate. He shows that the statements made by the FOMC in 2003 clarified the lower bound of its LIO and that the average of long-run inflation expectations responded by rising about 80 basis points. Moreover, consistent with reducing the market's uncertainty about the FOMC's LIO, long-run inflation expectations became more stable. The FOMC has recently been more specific about the upper bound of its LIO as well. The FOMC could eliminate the remaining uncertainty by establishing an explicit, numerical inflation objective.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel L. Thornton, 2007. "The lower and upper bounds of the Federal Open Market Committee's long-run inflation objective," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(May), pages 183-194.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2007:i:may:p:183-194:n:v.89no.3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/07/05/Thornton.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nelson Edward, 2005. "The Great Inflation of the Seventies: What Really Happened?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-50, July.
    2. Edward Nelson, 2005. "Monetary Policy Neglect and the Great Inflation in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    3. Ben S. Bernanke, 2006. "Semiannual monetary policy report to the Congress: testimony before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, February 16, 2006," Speech 168, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Alan Greenspan, 2005. "Chairman's remarks," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 137-138.
    5. Robert Elsasser & Brian P. Sack, 2004. "Treasury inflation-indexed debt: a review of the U.S. experience," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue May, pages 47-63.
    6. William Poole, 2006. "Inflation targeting," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(May), pages 155-164.
    7. Nelson, Edward & Nikolov, Kalin, 2004. "Monetary Policy and Stagflation in the UK," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(3), pages 293-318, June.
    8. Robert H. Rasche & Daniel L. Thornton, 2006. "Greenspan's unconventional view of the long-run inflation/output trade-off," Monetary Trends, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan.
    9. Brian P. Sack, 2000. "Deriving inflation expectations from nominal and inflation-indexed Treasury yields," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-33, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Ben S. Bernanke, 1993. "Credit in the macroeconomy," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 18(Spr), pages 50-70.
    11. Simon H. Kwan, 2005. "Inflation expectations: how the market speaks," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue oct7.
    12. Ben S. Bernanke & Otmar Issing & Donald L. Kohn, 2004. "Panel discussion: inflation targeting," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 86(Jul), pages 165-183.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James B. Bullard, 2013. "Seven Faces of \\"The Peril\\"," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Nov, pages 613-628.
    2. Daniel L. Thornton, 2010. "Which comes first: inflation or the FOMC's funds rate target?," Economic Synopses, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    3. Daniel L. Thornton, 2008. "The unusual behavior of the federal funds and 10-year Treasury rates: a conundrum or Goodhart’s Law?," Working Papers 2007-039, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    4. David Laidler, 2007. "Better Late Than Never: Towards a Systematic Review of Canada's Monetary Policy Regime," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 252, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Neely, Christopher J. & Rapach, David E., 2011. "International comovements in inflation rates and country characteristics," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 1471-1490.
    2. Nelson, Edward, 2008. "Ireland and Switzerland: The jagged edges of the Great Inflation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 700-732, May.
    3. Brett W. Fawley & Christopher J. Neely, 2014. "The evolution of Federal Reserve policy and the impact of monetary policy surprises on asset prices," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 96(1), pages 73-109.
    4. Christina D. Romer, 2005. "Commentary on \\"Origins of the Great Inflation\\"," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 87(Mar), pages 177-186.
    5. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach, 2008. "Is inflation an international phenomenon?," Working Papers 2008-025, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    6. Nelson, Edward, 2017. "Reaffirming the Influence of Milton Friedman on U.K. Economic Policy," Working Papers 2017-01, University of Sydney, School of Economics, revised Feb 2017.
    7. Garnier, Julien & Wilhelmsen, Björn-Roger, 2005. "The natural real interest rate and the output gap in the euro area: a joint estimation," Working Paper Series 546, European Central Bank.
    8. Edward Nelson, 2019. "Karl Brunner and U.K. Monetary Debate," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-004, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Aurélien Goutsmedt, 2021. "From the Stagflation to the Great Inflation: Explaining the US economy of the 1970s," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 131(3), pages 557-582.
    10. Chandranath Amarasekara & George J. Bratsiotis, 2012. "Monetary policy and real wage cyclicality," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(33), pages 4391-4408, November.
    11. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2005. "The decline of activist stabilization policy: Natural rate misperceptions, learning, and expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1927-1950, November.
    12. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    13. Edward Nelson, 2009. "An Overhaul of Doctrine: The Underpinning of UK Inflation Targeting," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(538), pages 333-368, June.
    14. Brian Snowdon, 2007. "The New Classical Counter-Revolution: False Path or Illuminating Complement?," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 541-562, Fall.
    15. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2015. "The Evolution of Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14611.
    16. Riccardo DiCecio & Edward Nelson, 2013. "The Great Inflation in the United States and the United Kingdom: Reconciling Policy Decisions and Data Outcomes," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 393-438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Michael D. Bordo & Athanasios Orphanides, 2013. "Introduction to "The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking"," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 1-22, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Suda, Jacek & Zervou, Anastasia S., 2018. "International Great Inflation And Common Monetary Policy," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(6), pages 1428-1461, September.
    19. Kosuke Aoki & Takeshi Kimura, 2008. "Central Bank's Two-Way Communication with the Public and Inflation Dynamics," CEP Discussion Papers dp0899, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. Ian Christensen & Frédéric Dion & Christopher Reid, 2004. "Real Return Bonds, Inflation Expectations, and the Break-Even Inflation Rate," Staff Working Papers 04-43, Bank of Canada.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2007:i:may:p:183-194:n:v.89no.3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.