Optimal Monetary Policy in the Sticky Information Model of Price Adjustment: Inflation Targeting or Price-Level Targeting?

I investigate optimal monetary policy in the sticky information model of price adjustment within a New Keynesian macroeconomic framework. The model is solved for optimal policy, and welfare implications of three alternative monetary policy regimes: unconstrained policy, price-level targeting and inflation targeting, are compared when there is a shock to the economy. The results for a cost-push shock illustrate that optimal policy depends on the degree of price stickiness and the persistence of the shock. Inflation targeting is the optimal policy if prices are flexible enough or the shock is persistent enough. However, for a demand shock, inflation targeting emerges as the best policy for all values of the price stickiness and the shock's persistence. When the volatility of nominal interest rate is taken into consideration, the results indicate that inflation targeting is the best policy, in the sense that it results in smaller welfare loss and volatility of nominal interest rate, if prices are sticky enough and the persistence of the shock is large enough. However, price-level targeting might be preferable to inflation targeting if prices are more flexible and the relative weight for the volatility of nominal interest rate is large.