 Average inflation targeting and interest-rate smoothingYunjong Eo and Denny Lie Economics Letters, 2020, vol. 189, issue C Abstract: We study the welfare implication of average inflation targeting as a simple interest-rate rule, in which the monetary authority adjusts its short-term policy rate in response to the output gap as well as average inflation deviation from its target instead of reacting to the contemporaneous inflation rate as in a Taylor-type rule. We find that the welfare improvement achieved by switching to average inflation targeting from a standard Taylor rule is modest with a high degree of interest-rate smoothing, whereas it is significant without interest-rate smoothing. We show that average inflation targeting is welfare-improving in the same way as interest-rate smoothing by making the conduct of monetary policy history-dependent. Thus, the high degree of monetary policy inertia in the estimated interest-rate rules in many advanced economies implies that the welfare gain from adopting the average inflation targeting rule would be minimal. Keywords: New Keynesian model; History-dependent policy; Welfare analysis; Ramsey policy; Interest-rate rule; Monetary policy inertia (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:189:y:2020:i:c:s0165176520300367 DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109005 Access Statistics for this article Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier |
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