IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/rbnkwp/0098.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Targeting Inflation over the Short, Medium and Long Term

Author

Listed:
  • Nessén, Marianne

    (Research Department, Central Bank of Sweden)

Abstract

A central bank pursuing the policy of inflation targeting aims to keep inflation as close as possible to a pre-announced value. But which 'inflation' should this be? Quarterly, annual, biennial? In theoretical models it is typically inflation during one period. We analyze how changing the period over which the inflation rate is defined - i.e. changing central bank preferences - affects optimal monetary policy. It is shown that when targeting inflation is the sole objective of the central bank, more aggressive monetary policy results; but when output stabilization is also a concern, a 'longer-term view' typically leads to a more cautious conduct of monetary policy and less variability in output. The conditions under which inflation targeting in effect becomes price level targeting are also examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Nessén, Marianne, 1999. "Targeting Inflation over the Short, Medium and Long Term," Working Paper Series 98, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0098
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.riksbank.com/upload/4248/WP_98.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Orphanides, Athanasios & Wieland, Volker, 2000. "Inflation zone targeting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(7), pages 1351-1387, June.
    2. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1997. "Inflation forecast targeting: Implementing and monitoring inflation targets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1111-1146, June.
    3. Julio J. Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1999. "Interest Rate Rules in an Estimated Sticky Price Model," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 57-126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lars E. O. Svensson, 1999. "Inflation Targeting: Some Extensions," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 101(3), pages 337-361, September.
    5. Michael Woodford, 1999. "Optimal Monetary Policy Inertia," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 67(s1), pages 1-35.
    6. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2001. "Is The Fed Too Timid? Monetary Policy In An Uncertain World," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 203-217, May.
    7. Nessen, Marianne & Vestin, David, 2005. "Average Inflation Targeting," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 837-863, October.
    8. repec:bla:scandj:v:101:y:1999:i:3:p:337-61 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. repec:bla:scandj:v:104:y:2002:i:1:p:125-45 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Brian P. Sack, 1998. "Does the Fed act gradually? a VAR analysis," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1998-17, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Söderström, Ulf, 1999. "Should central banks be more aggressive?," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 309, Stockholm School of Economics.
    12. Ulf Söderström, 2002. "Monetary Policy with Uncertain Parameters," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 104(1), pages 125-145, March.
    13. Andrew G Haldane, 1997. "Designing Inflation Targets," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Philip Lowe (ed.),Monetary Policy and Inflation Targeting, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    14. Sack, Brian, 2000. "Does the fed act gradually? A VAR analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 229-256, August.
    15. repec:bla:manchs:v:67:y:1999:i:0:p:1-35 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. John C. Williams, 2003. "Simple rules for monetary policy," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-12.
    17. Vestin, David, 2000. "Price-level Targeting versus Inflation Targeting in a Forward-looking Model," Working Paper Series 106, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    18. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1.
    19. Batini, Nicoletta & Yates, Anthony, 2003. "Hybrid Inflation and Price-Level Targeting," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(3), pages 283-300, June.
    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. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2004. "Monetary Policy Rules, Macroeconomic Stability, and Inflation: A View from the Trenches," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 151-175, April.
    2. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Historical monetary policy analysis and the Taylor rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 983-1022, July.
    3. Smets, Frank, 2000. "What horizon for price stability," Working Paper Series 0024, European Central Bank.
    4. Nessen, Marianne & Vestin, David, 2005. "Average Inflation Targeting," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 837-863, October.
    5. Kirdan Lees, 2003. "The stabilisation problem: the case of New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2003/08, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    6. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2004. "Monetary Policy Rules, Macroeconomic Stability, and Inflation: A View from the Trenches," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(2), pages 151-175, April.
    7. Richard Mash, 2003. "New Keynesian Microfoundations Revisited: A Calvo-Taylor-Rule-of-Thumb Model and Optimal Monetary Policy Delegation," Economics Series Working Papers 174, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    8. Smets, Frank, 2000. "What horizon for price stability," Working Paper Series 24, European Central Bank.
    9. Lees, Kirdan & Warburton, Sam, 2010. "A happy "half way-house"? Medium term inflation targeting in New Zealand," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 819-839, September.
    10. Dillén, Hans, 2002. "Inflation Targeting and the Dynamics of the Transmission Mechanism," Working Paper Series 141, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden), revised 01 Jul 2004.
    11. Söderström, Ulf & Söderlind, Paul & Vredin, Anders, 2002. "Can a Calibrated New-Keynesian Model of Monetary Policy Fit the Facts?," Working Paper Series 140, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    12. Teruyoshi Kobayashi, 2004. "Hybrid Inflation‐Price‐Level Targeting in an Economy With Output Persistence," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 51(5), pages 641-653, November.

    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. Kimura, Takeshi & Kurozumi, Takushi, 2007. "Optimal monetary policy in a micro-founded model with parameter uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 399-431, February.
    2. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2002. "Assessing Nominal Income Rules for Monetary Policy with Model and Data Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 402-432, April.
    3. Teruyoshi Kobayashi, 2004. "On the Relationship Between Short‐ and Long‐term Interest Rates," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 261-286, July.
    4. Driffill, John & Rotondi, Zeno, 2007. "Inertia in Taylor Rules," CEPR Discussion Papers 6570, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Marc P. Giannoni, 2007. "Robust optimal monetary policy in a forward-looking model with parameter and shock uncertainty," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(1), pages 179-213.
    6. Lars E. O. Svensson, 2001. "Price Stability as a Target for Monetary Policy: Defining and Maintaining Price Stability," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Deutsche Bundesbank (ed.), The Monetary Transmission Process, chapter 2, pages 60-111, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. Efrem Castelnuovo, 2002. "Squeezing the Interest Rate Smoothing Weight with a Hybrid Expectations Model," Macroeconomics 0211006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Levin, Andrew T. & Williams, John C., 2003. "Robust monetary policy with competing reference models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 945-975, July.
    9. Walsh, Carl E., 2004. "Implications of a Changing Economic Structure for the Strategy of Monetary Policy," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt84g1q1g6, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    10. Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2006. "Monetary Policy Inertia: Fact or Fiction?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(4), December.
    11. Aoki, Kosuke, 2003. "On the optimal monetary policy response to noisy indicators," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 501-523, April.
    12. Lansing, Kevin J. & Trehan, Bharat, 2003. "Forward-looking behavior and optimal discretionary monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 249-256, November.
    13. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "The quest for prosperity without inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 633-663, April.
    14. Richard Mash, 2003. "New Keynesian Microfoundations Revisited: A Calvo-Taylor-Rule-of-Thumb Model and Optimal Monetary Policy Delegation," Economics Series Working Papers 174, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Gregory Erin Givens, 2006. "Revisiting the Delegation Problem in a Sticky Price and Wage Economy," Working Papers 200601, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    16. Marc Giannoni, 2006. "Robust Optimal Policy in a Forward-Looking Model with Parameter and Shock Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 11942, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Williams, John C., 2013. "A defense of moderation in monetary policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 38(PB), pages 137-150.
    18. Leitemo, Kai & Soderstrom, Ulf, 2005. "Simple monetary policy rules and exchange rate uncertainty," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 481-507, April.
    19. Carl E. Walsh, 2003. "Implications of a changing economic structure for the strategy of monetary policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 297-348.
    20. Efrem Castelnuovo, 2003. "Taylor Rules and Interest Rate Smoothing in the US and EMU," Macroeconomics 0303002, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation targeting; Price level targeting; Optimal monetary policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • 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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hhs:rbnkwp:0098. 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: Lena Löfgren (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbgovse.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.