Anticipated Alternative Instrument-Rate Paths in Policy Simulations

Stefan Laséen () and Lars E.O. Svensson ()

No 14902, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper specifies how to do policy simulations with alternative instrument-rate paths in DSGE models such as Ramses, the Riksbank's main model for policy analysis and forecasting. The new element is that these alternative instrument-rate paths are anticipated by the private sector. Such simulations correspond to situations where the Riksbank transparently announces that it plans to implement a particular instrument-rate path and where this announcement is believed by the private sector. Previous methods have instead implemented alternative instrument-rate paths by adding unanticipated shocks to an instrument rule, as in the method of modest interventions by Leeper and Zha (2003). This corresponds to a very different situation where the Riksbank would nontransparently and secretly plan to implement deviations from an announced instrument rule. Such deviations are in practical simulations normally both serially correlated and large, which seems inconsistent with the assumption that they would remain unanticipated by the private sector. Simulations with anticipated instrument-rate paths seem more relevant for the transparent flexible inflation targeting that the Riksbank conducts. We provide an algorithm for the computation of policy simulations with arbitrary restrictions on nominal and real instrument-rate paths for an arbitrary number of periods after which a given policy rule, including targeting rules and explicit, implicit, or forecast-based instrument rules is implemented. When inflation projections are sufficiently sensitive to the real interest-rate path, restrictions on real interest-rate paths provide more intuitive and robust results, whereas restrictions on nominal interest-rate path may provide somewhat counter-intuitive results.

JEL-codes: E52 E58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-cmp, nep-ecm, nep-for and nep-mac
Date: 2009-04
Note: EFG IFM ME
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14902.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:14902

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14902
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 ().