The Welfare Implications of Inflation versus Price-Level Targeting in a Two-Sector, Small Open Economy

Eva Ortega and Nooman Rebei

Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada

Abstract: The authors analyze the welfare implications of simple monetary policy rules in the context of an estimated model of a small open economy for Canada with traded and non-traded goods, and with sticky prices and wages. They find statistically significant heterogeneity in the degree of price rigidity across sectors. They also find welfare gains in targeting only the non-traded-goods inflation, since prices are found to be more sticky in this production sector, but those gains come at the cost of substantially increased aggregate volatility. The authors look for the welfare-maximizing specification of an interest rate reaction function that allows for a specific price-level target. They find, however, that, overall, the higher welfare is achieved, given the estimated model for the Canadian economy, with a strict inflation-targeting rule where the central bank reacts to the next period's expected deviation from the inflation target and does not target the output gap.

Keywords: Economic models; Exchange rates; Inflation targets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E32 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 70 pages
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-fmk, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/wp06-12.pdf

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bca:bocawp:06-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada 234 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G9, Canada. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().