Inflation Targeting: What can the ECB Learn from the Recent Experience of the Bank of England

Michael Artis, Zenon Kontolemis and Paul Mizen

No 1941, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The establishment of the European Central Bank (ECB) presents a rare opportunity to define the operations of a central bank with no prior track record. Before the ECB specifies an, as yet undefined, operational target this paper asks what might be learnt from the recent experience of inflation targeting at the Bank of England. We consider whether there should be single or multiple targets and which, if any, of the existing inflation measures should be used. If inflation is targeted then a forecast of its value becomes the intermediate variable. This raises both the issue of transparency and the issue of providing a compensating supply of information material necessary to fill the gap, but too much ‘openness’ can also be problematic. The ECB must be accountable and the contracting approach may be useful, but being seen to ‘say’ and ‘do’ the same thing is ultimately of the most importance.

Keywords: Accountability; Bank of England; Central Bank; ECB; Inflation Targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 E58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1941 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Inflation Targeting: What Can the ECB Learn from the Recent Experience of the Bank of England? (1998)
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:cpr:ceprdp:1941

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=1941

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().