Are Bygones not Bygones? Modeling Price Level Targeting with an Escape Clause and Lessons from the Gold Standard

Paul Masson and Malik Shukayev ()

Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada

Abstract: Like the gold standard, price level targeting (PT) involves not letting past deviations of inflation be bygones; both regimes return the price level (or price of gold) to its target. The experience of suspension of the gold standard in World War I, resumption in the 1920s (for some countries at a different parity), and final abandonment is reviewed. It suggests that PT would likely operate with an escape clause that allowed rebasing of the price target in the face of large output declines. Using a calibrated general equilibrium model, we show that such an escape clause can produce multiple equilibria. For some parameterizations, there is a low credibility equilibrium (with high expectation of a reset) associated with high output volatility and frequent resets. These problems reduce the expectational advantage of PT over inflation targeting.

Keywords: Credibility; Monetary policy framework (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E31 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Chapter: Are Bygones Not Bygones? Modeling Price-Level Targeting with an Escape Clause and Lessons from the Gold Standard (2019)
Journal Article: Are bygones not bygones? Modeling price-level targeting with an escape clause and lessons from the gold standard (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bca:bocawp:08-27

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