Optimal Inflation Rate: A Meta-Analysis

Matej Opatrny, Martin Opatrny, Tomas Havranek, Zuzana Irsova and Mojmir Hampl

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: We revisit the optimal long-run inflation rate using 777 estimates from 116 primary studies published between 1989 and 2026, the largest sample assembled to date. To our knowledge, this is among the first meta-analyses in economics whose primary-data extraction is performed end-to-end through a documented and auditable large-language-model pipeline, calibrated against a hand-coded training set and released for replication. Across publication-selection and selection-on-significance diagnostics that are applicable in this calibration-dominated corpus, the literature points to an optimum of roughly 0.6 percentage points per year, well below the two-percent targets commonly used by advanced-economy central banks. Bayesian model averaging over the full structural-moderator schema shows that cross-study variation is driven by genuine modelling choices, the choice of monetary benchmark (Friedman rule vs. laissez-faire), the transactions-frictions technology, the assumed shock structure, and the class of nominal-rigidity contract, rather than by selective reporting.

Keywords: optimal inflation rate; Meta-analysis; large language models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mon
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:341462

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