Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks: Does a Dual Mandate Make Sense?

Davide Debortoli, Jinill Kim, Jesper Lindé and Ricardo Nunes

No 366, Working Paper Series from Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden)

Abstract: Yes, it makes a lot of sense. This paper studies how to design simple loss functions for central banks, as parsimonious approximations to social welfare. We show, both analytically and quantitatively, that simple loss functions should feature a high weight on measures of economic activity, sometimes even larger than the weight on inflation. Two main factors drive our result. First, stabilizing economic activity also stabilizes other welfare-relevant variables. Second, the estimated model features mitigated inflation distortions due to a low elasticity of substitution between monopolistic goods and a low interest rate sensitivity of demand. The result holds up in the presence of measurement errors, with large shocks that generate a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and resource utilization, and also when imposing a moderate degree of interest rate volatility.

Keywords: Central banksobjectives; simple loss function; monetary policy design; sticky prices and sticky wages; DSGE models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E58 E61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2018-07-01, Revised 2019-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cba, nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapport ... ndate-make-sense.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks: Does a Dual Mandate Make Sense? (2019)
Working Paper: Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks: Does a Dual Mandate Make Sense? (2017)
Working Paper: Designing a Simple Loss Function for Central Banks: Does a Dual Mandate Make Sense? (2017)
Working Paper: Designing a simple loss function for central banks: Does a dual mandate make sense? (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0366

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden) Sveriges Riksbank, SE-103 37 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lena Löfgren ().