Monetary Policy and Open-Economy Uncertainty

This paper focuses on optimal monetary policy in presence of uncertainty of the structural parameters that characterize an open economy. The framework is a Markov jump-linear-quadratic new Keynesian model, where the central bank searches for the optimal policy in a non certainty equivalence environment. Comparing CPI and domestic inflation targeting, this paper shows that the latter implies considerably less variability in the central bank distribution forecast of the economic dynamics. In particular, the variability of the interest rates distribution forecast is much larger with CPI inflation targeting. The paper also shows that domestic inflation targeting is much less sensitive than CPI inflation targeting to interest rate smoothing and cost-push shocks.