Forecast Targeting as a Monetary Policy Strategy: Policy Rules in Practice

Michael Woodford ()

No 13716, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Forecast targeting is an innovation in central banking that represents an important step toward more rule-based policymaking, even if it is not an attempt to follow a policy rule of any of the types that have received primary attention in the theoretical literature on optimal monetary policy. This paper discusses the extent to which forecast targeting can be considered an example of a policy rule, and the conditions under which it would represent a desirable rule, with a view to suggesting improvements in the approaches currently used by forecast-targeting central banks. Particular attention is given to the intertemporal consistency of forecast-targeting procedures, the assumptions about future policy that should be used in constructing the forecasts used in such procedures, the horizon with which the target criterion should be concerned, the relevance of forecasts other than the inflation forecast, and the degree of robustness of a desirable target criterion for monetary policy to changing circumstances.

JEL-codes: E52 E58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-for, nep-mac and nep-mon
Date: 2007-12
Note: ME
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13716.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13716

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13716
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().