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Discretionary Monetary Policy and Inflation Persistence

Abstract

Rational expectations models of staggered price/wage contracts have failed to replicate the observed persistence in inflation and unemployment during disinflation periods. The current literature on this persistency puzzle has focused on augmenting the nominal contract model with imperfect credibility and learning. In this paper, I re-examine the persistency puzzle by focusing on the discretionary nature of monetary policy. I show that when the central bank is allowed to re-optimize a quadratic loss function each period, imperfect credibility and learning, even in the absence of staggered contracts, can generate a significant amount of inflation persistence and employment losses during a disinflationary period.

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Paper provided by Hunter College Department of Economics in its series Economics Working Paper Archive at Hunter College with number 424.

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Date of creation: 2005
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Handle: RePEc:htr:hcecon:424
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Keywords: Monetary policy; Disinflation; Credibility; Inflation persistence;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
  • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

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  1. Laurence Ball, 1993. "What determines the sacrifice ratio?," Working Papers 93-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
  2. 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.
  3. Ireland, Peter N., 1999. "Does the time-consistency problem explain the behavior of inflation in the United States?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 279-291, October.
  4. David Andolfatto & Paul Gomme, 1997. "Monetary Policy Regimes and Beliefs," Cahiers de recherche CREFE / CREFE Working Papers 48, CREFE, Université du Québec à Montréal, revised Apr 2001.
  5. John B. Taylor, 1982. "Union Wage Settlements During a Disinflation," NBER Working Papers 0985, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. 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.
  7. Erceg, Christopher J. & Levin, Andrew T., 2003. "Imperfect credibility and inflation persistence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 915-944, May.
  8. Peter N. Ireland, 1995. "Optimal disinflationary paths," Working Paper 95-01, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
  9. John B. Taylor, 1998. "Staggered Price and Wage Setting in Macroeconomics," NBER Working Papers 6754, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Jeff Fuhrer & George Moore, 1993. "Inflation persistence," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
  11. Edmund Phelps, 1978. "Disinflation without recession: Adaptive guideposts and monetary policy," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer, vol. 114(4), pages 783-809, December.
  12. Chan G. Huh & Kevin J. Lansing, 1997. "Expectations, credibility, and disinflation in a small macroeconomic model," Working Paper 9713, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
  13. Ball, Laurence, 1994. "Credible Disinflation with Staggered Price-Setting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 282-89, March.
  14. Laurence Ball, 1992. "Disinflation With Imperfect Credibility," NBER Working Papers 3983, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  15. Robert J. Barro & David B. Gordon, 1981. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural-Rate Model," NBER Working Papers 0807, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Cited by:

  1. Muhammad, Omer & de Haan, Jakob & Scholtens, Bert, 2014. "An Empirical Analysis of Excess Interbank Liquidity: A Case Study of Pakistan," MPRA Paper 56143, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Marika Karanassou & Dennis J. Snower, 2007. "Inflation Persistence and the Phillips Curve Revisited," Working Papers 586, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
  3. Dai, Meixing & Sidiropoulos, Moïse & Spyromitros, Eleftherios, 2008. "Monetary policy transparency and inflation persistence in a small open economy," MPRA Paper 13829, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2009.
  4. Marco Bonomo & Carlos Carvalho, 2010. "Imperfectly Credible Disinflation under Endogenous Time-Dependent Pricing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(5), pages 799-831, 08.
  5. van der Cruijsen, C.A.B., 2008. "The economic impact of central bank transparency," Other publications TiSEM 86c1ba91-1952-45b4-adac-8, School of Economics and Management.
  6. Naveen Srinivasan & Pankaj Kumar, 2012. "Inflation Persistence: Does Credibility of the Monetary Regime Matter?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 2944-2954.
  7. Marco Bonomo & Carlos Viana de Carvalho, 2004. "Endogenous Time-Dependent Rules and the Costs of Disinflation with Imperfect Credibility," Macroeconomics 0402006, EconWPA, revised 04 Sep 2005.
  8. Agnieszka Leszczynska & Katarzyna Hertel, 2013. "Inflation persistence – a disaggregated approach," EcoMod2013 5692, EcoMod.

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