Whose monetary policy is it anyway?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tootell, GMB
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3932(98)00041-5
• 发表日期: 1999
• 页码: 217-235
• 关键词: goal-independence; monetary policy

摘要

The rising inflation of the 1970s inspired substantial theoretical analysis of the goals of central banks. In models with time-inconsistent monetary policy, central bankers are assumed to produce positive equilibrium inflation because they target an unemployment rate below the NAIRU. Ball (1995) notes that these models could explain the level of inflation but not its frequent and persistent movements. Although real shocks, as in Rogoff (1985), can produce temporary changes in inflation, Ball explains the recurrent and persistent movements in inflation throughout the past 40 years with random changes in the preferences of the monetary policymakers, occurring even at the frequency of FOMC meetings. This paper provides empirical support that shifts in goals can indeed occur at this frequency. However, it is not necessarily the tastes of the policymakers that are changing; the FOMC's reading of the policy desired by the public can evolve over time, and if the FOMC is not completely goal-independent, it will accommodate these changes. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: E52; E58.