This timely volume presents the latest thinking on the monetary policy rules and seeks to determine just what types of rules and policy guidelines function best. A unique cooperative research effort that allowed contributors to evaluate different policy rules using their own specific approaches, this collection presents their striking findings on the potential response of interest rates to an array of variables, including alterations in the rates of inflation, unemployment, and exchange. Monetary Policy Rules illustrates that simple policy rules are more robust and more efficient than complex rules with multiple variables. A state-of-the-art appraisal of the fundamental issues facing the Federal Reserve Board and other central banks, Monetary Policy Rules is essential reading for economic analysts and policymakers alike.

This new volume sheds new light on current monetary issues, in particular the debate on monetary policy making, by blending theoretical economic analysis, history of economics, and historical case studies. A discretionary monetary policy refers to cases in which the central bank is free to change its policy actions or key instruments when the need arises, whilst a monetary policy rule can be defined as a commitment from (independent) central banks to reach one or several objective(s) by way of systematic policy actions. This book uses case studies from France and Sweden, and places them in the context of Keynes’ argument from his 1923 ‘Tract on Monetary Reforms’, to support the argument that the use of discretionary practices within a monetary policy rule (such as in the Gold Standard era) is the best approach. This book takes an innovative approach in combining a theoretical analysis (mainly the work of New Neoclassical Synthesis throughout Woodford's model) a history of economic thought analysis (based on the monetary works from Wicksell, Cassel and Keynes) and an historical study of central bank practices both in France (based on Bank of France archives materials) and in Sweden. The final section of the book explores the debate on monetary policy rule in light of the 2008 financial crisis. As such, the book provides a unique synthesis that will be of interest not only to scholars of history of economic thought and economic theory, but also to anyone with an interest in monetary economics and contemporary monetary policy.

This paper asks whether inflation targeting improves economic performance, as measured by the behavior of inflation, output, and interest rates. We compare seven OECD countries that adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s to thirteen that did not. After the early 90s, performance improved along many dimensions for both the targeting countries and the non-targeters. In some cases the targeters improved by more; for example, average inflation fell by a larger amount. However, these differences are explained by the facts that targeters performed worse than non-targeters before the early 90s, and there is regression to the mean. Once one controls for regression to the mean, there is no evidence that inflation targeting improves performance.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 1,3, University of Bonn (Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultät), course: Geldtheorie- und politik, language: English, abstract: Does inflation reduce welfare? What is worse, a volatile exchange rate or a high inflation rate? And is the central bank able to drive these variables? These questions are the topic of a paper by Jordi Gali and Tommaso Monacelli, published in 2005 and titled "Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Volatility in a Small Open Economy". As apparent by the title Gali and Monacelli (G+M) analyze the influence of monetary policy on the volatility of the exchange rate, more precisely the nominal exchange rate and the terms of trade. For this purpose they create a small open economy with sticky prices of Calvo-type. Due to its minor size this economy does not influence the world economy. However, depending on the degree of openness this economy is affected by the rest of the world. Having specified this framework, G+M introduce three different monetary regimes and evaluate the resulting exchange rate volatilities . Using a central bank loss function G+M rank these three rules according to the implied welfare which shows a positive correlation between welfare and exchange rate volatility. Thence G+M prefer Taylor rules over an exchange rate pegging. To get a general idea of Gali and Monacelli`s argumentation this expose will start in chapter 2 with an abbreviated overlook over G+M's model of a small open economy. In the following chapter there will be the introduction of the three central bank rules, necessary to close the model, as well as an analysis of the underlying welfare levels. Since the welfare evaluation is based on some special assumptions, chapter 4 will give an overview of recent literature which discusses possible extensions as well as their implications for G+M's ranking of implied welfare. Concluding cha