Heterogeneous Information about the Term Structure of Interest Rates, Least-Squares Learning and Optimal Interest Rate Rules for Inflation Forecast Targeting

Mewael F. Tesfaselassie, Eric Schaling (eric.schaling@wits.ac.za) and Sylvester Eijffinger

No 78, Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings from Econometric Society

Abstract: In this paper we incorporate the term structure of interest rates in a standard inflation forecast targeting framework. Learning about the transmission process of monetary policy is introduced by having heterogeneous agents - i.e. the central bank and private agents - who have different information sets about the future sequence of short-term interest rates. We analyse inflation forecast targeting in two environments. One in which the central bank has perfect knowledge, in the sense that it understands and observes the process by which private sector interest rate expectations are generated, and one in which the central bank has imperfect knowledge and has to learn the private sector forecasting rule for short-term interest rates. In the case of imperfect knowledge, the central bank has to learn about private sector interest rate expectations, as the latter affect the impact of monetary policy through the expectations theory of the term structure of interest rates. Here following Evans and Honkapohja (2001), the learning scheme we investigate is that of least-squares learning (recursive OLS) using the Kalman filter. We find that optimal monetary policy under learning is a policy that separates estimation and control. Therefore, this model suggests that the practical relevance of the breakdown of the separation principle and the need for experimentation in policy may be limited

Keywords: Learning; Rational Expectations; Separation Principle; Kalman Filter; Term Structure of Interest Rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C53 E43 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-08-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-mon
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.org/esNASM04/up.26401.1073296430.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Information about the Term Structure of Interest rates, Least-Squares Learning and Optimal Interest Rate Rules for Inflation Forecast Targeting (2004)
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Information about the Term Structure of Interest rates, Least-Squares Learning and Optimal Interest Rate Rules for Inflation Forecast Targeting (2004)
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:ecm:nasm04:78

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings from Econometric Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum (baum@bc.edu).