IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sce/scecf1/254.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge

Author

Listed:
  • Athanasios Orphanides amd John Williams

Abstract

This paper studies the formulation of monetary policy in a changing environment when knowledge regarding some aspects of the structure of the economy is imperfect and an adaptive learning technology is available to the policymaker and economic agents. As a benchmark, we develop a simple model of the economy and identify efficient monetary policy rules under the assumptions that knowledge of the economy is perfect and expectations are formed rationally. We then relax the assumption of rational expectations and examine the design of policy when agents and/or the policymaker must rely on adaptive learning to form expectations. We show that policies that are efficient under rational expectations are no longer efficient under imperfect knowledge, and, conversely, that efficient policies under imperfect knowledge would appear inefficient to the outside observer who assumed perfect knowledge. Using these results, we discuss the role of imperfect knowledge on the evolution of monetary policy in the United States over the past twenty years.

Suggested Citation

  • Athanasios Orphanides amd John Williams, 2001. "Monetary Policy with Imperfect Knowledge," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 254, Society for Computational Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:sce:scecf1:254
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2007. "Inflation targeting under imperfect knowledge," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-23.
    2. 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.
    3. John C. Williams, 2006. "Robust estimation and monetary policy with unobserved structural change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-16.
    4. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2005. "Inflation scares and forecast-based monetary policy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(2), pages 498-527, April.
    5. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2002. "Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 63-146.
    6. Athanasios Orphanides & John Williams, 2004. "Imperfect Knowledge, Inflation Expectations, and Monetary Policy," NBER Chapters, in: The Inflation-Targeting Debate, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ben S. Bernanke & Michael Woodford, 2004. "The Inflation-Targeting Debate," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bern04-1.
    8. Mccallum, Bennet T., 1988. "Robustness properties of a rule for monetary policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 173-203, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2007. "Robust monetary policy with imperfect knowledge," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(5), pages 1406-1435, July.
    2. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2007. "Inflation targeting under imperfect knowledge," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-23.
    3. Orphanides, Athanasios & Williams, John C., 2008. "Learning, expectations formation, and the pitfalls of optimal control monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(Supplemen), pages 80-96, October.
    4. 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.
    5. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2013. "Monetary Policy Mistakes and the Evolution of Inflation Expectations," NBER Chapters, in: The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking, pages 255-288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Athanasios Orphanides & John C. Williams, 2009. "Imperfect Knowledge and the Pitfalls of Optimal Control Monetary Policy," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Carl E. Walsh & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Series (ed.),Monetary Policy under Uncertainty and Learning, edition 1, volume 13, chapter 4, pages 115-144, Central Bank of Chile.
    7. John C. Williams, 2006. "Robust estimation and monetary policy with unobserved structural change," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 1-16.
    8. Hagedorn, Marcus, 2011. "Optimal disinflation in new Keynesian models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 248-261.
    9. Milani, Fabio, 2007. "Expectations, learning and macroeconomic persistence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 2065-2082, October.
    10. Vitor Gaspar & Frank Smets & David Vestin, 2006. "Optimal Monetary Policy under Adaptive Learning," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 183, Society for Computational Economics.
    11. Fabio Milani, 2006. "A Bayesian DSGE Model with Infinite-Horizon Learning: Do "Mechanical" Sources of Persistence Become Superfluous?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(3), September.
    12. Suh, Sangwon & Kim, Daehwan, 2021. "Inflation targeting and expectation anchoring: Evidence from developed and emerging market economies," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    13. Orphanides, Athanasios, 2003. "Historical monetary policy analysis and the Taylor rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 983-1022, July.
    14. Pfajfar, Damjan & Santoro, Emiliano, 2010. "Heterogeneity, learning and information stickiness in inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 426-444, September.
    15. Athanasios Orphanides, 2007. "Taylor rules," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2007-18, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Hommes, Cars & Lustenhouwer, Joep, 2019. "Inflation targeting and liquidity traps under endogenous credibility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 48-62.
    17. Gelain, Paolo & Iskrev, Nikolay & J. Lansing, Kevin & Mendicino, Caterina, 2019. "Inflation dynamics and adaptive expectations in an estimated DSGE model," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 258-277.
    18. Andrew T. Levin & Alexei Onatski & John Williams & Noah M. Williams, 2006. "Monetary Policy under Uncertainty in Micro-Founded Macroeconometric Models," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 229-312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Gavin, William T. & Keen, Benjamin D. & Pakko, Michael R., 2009. "Inflation Risk And Optimal Monetary Policy," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(S1), pages 58-75, May.
    20. Slobodyan, Sergey & Wouters, Raf, 2012. "Learning in an estimated medium-scale DSGE model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 26-46.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    monetary policy; learning; rational expectations; optimal control; nflation targeting; policy rules; expectation formation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:sce:scecf1:254. 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sceeeea.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.