Monetary Policy and Public Finances: Inflation Targets in a New Perspective

Christian Beddies

No 1999/026, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper considers the interaction between the private sector, the monetary authority, and the fiscal authority, and concludes that unrestricted central bank independence may not be an optimal way to collect seigniorage revenues or stabilize supply shocks. Moreover, the paper shows that the implementation of an optimal inflation target results in optimal shares of government finances—seigniorage, taxes, and the spending shortfall—from society’s point of view but still involves suboptimal stabilization. Even if price stability is the sole central bank objective, a positive inflation target has important implications for the government’s finances, as well as for stabilization.

Keywords: WP; central bank; Policy interaction; public finances; seigniorage; inflation targets; budget constraint; financing requirement; optimization problem; loss function; targeting regime; inflation response; rate of inflation; authorities move; unanticipated inflation; inflation bias story; Inflation targeting; Inflation; Supply shocks; Central bank autonomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 1999-03-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=2901 (application/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:imf:imfwpa:1999/026

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().