Signaling and Commitment: Monetary Versus Inflation Targeting

36 Pages Posted: 13 Dec 1999

See all articles by Hans Gersbach

Hans Gersbach

ETH Zurich - CER-ETH -Center of Economic Research; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Volker Hahn

University of Konstanz

Date Written: December 2003

Abstract

The article compares the social efficiency of monetary targeting and inflation targeting when central banks may have private information on shocks to money demand and the transparency solution is not feasible because of verifiability problems. Under inflation targeting and monetary targeting, central banks may have an incentive to signal their private information in order to influence the public's expectations about future inflation. We show that inflation targeting is superior to monetary targeting as it makes it easier for central banks to commit to low inflation. Moreover, central banks that are weak on inflation prefer inflation targeting to monetary targeting.

Keywords: Central Banks, Inflation Targeting, Monetary Targeting, Signaling, Commitment

JEL Classification: E5, E52, E58

Suggested Citation

Gersbach, Hans and Hahn, Volker, Signaling and Commitment: Monetary Versus Inflation Targeting (December 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=198888 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.198888

Hans Gersbach

ETH Zurich - CER-ETH -Center of Economic Research ( email )

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IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

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Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

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Volker Hahn (Contact Author)

University of Konstanz ( email )

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