Inflation Bias Research Articles

Monetary Discretion, Pricing Complementarity, and Dynamic Multiple Equilibria

In a plain-vanilla New Keynesian model with two-period staggered price-setting, discretionary monetary policy leads to multiple equilibria. Complementarity between the pricing decisions of forward-looking firms underlies the multiplicity, which is intrinsically dynamic in nature. At each point in time, the discretionary monetary authority optimally accommodates the level of predetermined prices when setting the money supply because it is concerned solely about real activity. Hence, if other firms set a high price in the current period, an individual firm will optimally choose a high price because it knows that the monetary authority next period will accommodate with a high money supply. Under commitment, the mechanism generating complementarity is absent: the monetary authority commits not to respond to future predetermined prices. We compute a traditional inflation bias equilibrium, in which price-setters are optimistic, rationally expecting small adjustments by other firms. But there is another steady-state equilibrium in which price setters are pessimistic and inflation is much higher. Further, we find that there are multiple equilibria at a point in time, not just in steady states. In a stochastic setting with equilibrium selection each period determined by an i.i.d. sunspot, there is greater inflation bias on average than if price-setters were always optimistic. The sunspot realization also has real effects: periods of higher than average inflation are accompanied by low output. Thus, increased real volatility may be an additional cost of discretion in monetary policy.

Reflections on the current fashion for central bank independence

This paper challenges the time-inconsistency case for central bank independence. It argues that the time-inconsistency literature not only seriously confuses the substance of the rules vs discretion debate, but also posits an implausible view of monetary policy. Most worryingly, the inflationary bias featured prominently in the time-inconsistency literature has encouraged the development of a dangerously one-sided approach to central bank independence which entirely ignores the potential risks involved in maximising central bankers' latitude for discretion. The analysis shows that a more balanced and symmetric approach to central bank independence is urgently needed. The views of Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman are shown to shed some illuminating and disconcerting light on a fashionable free-lunch promise that is based on rather shallow theoretical foundations and empirical evidence.

Political uncertainty and monetary unions

The purpose of this article is to provide a political economy rationale that helps explain why some non-central European economies, featuring highly idiosyncratic disturbances and apparently low inflation bias inefficiencies, seem so eager to enter the European Monetary Union (EMU). The main message from the paper is that because these economies normally display a high degree of domestic political uncertainty, the "economic costs" arising from the decision to surrender monetary policy may in fact be less severe than the "political costs" of opting out of EMU and then possibly facing undesired inflation upsurges in the future.

Optimal Central Bank Conservatism and Monopoly Trade Unions

The "conservative central banker" has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an exogenously given preference against inflation. We reframe this discussion in a standard trade union model. We show that the case against the conservative central banker rests exclusively on the assumption of a strictly nominal outside option (for instance, unemployment benefits) for the union. There is no welfare gain associated with making the central bank less conservative than society, however if the outside option is in real terms. As the nominal components of the trade union's outside option are mainly public transfers, we also show that the conservative central banker is always optimal if the government can choose the level of unemployment benefits as well as the degree of central bank conservatism.

Timeless Perspective vs. Discretionary Monetary Policy in Forward-Looking Models

This Paper reviews the distinction between the timeless perspective and discretionary modes of monetary policymaking, the former representing rule-based policy as recently formalized by Woodford (1999b). In models with forward-looking expectations there is typically a second inefficiency from discretionary policymaking, besides the inflationary bias. The Paper presents calculations of the quantitative magnitude of this second inefficiency, using calibrated models of two prominent types; it examines the distinction between instrument rules and targeting rules; and briefly investigates operationality issues involving the unobservability of current output and the possibility that an incorrect concept of the natural-rate level of output is used by the policymaker.

Inflation Bias after the Euro: Evidence from the UK and Italy

This paper presents an indirect approach to investigate the possible existence of measurement error bias in the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices for the UK and Italy. Our empirical results show that there is no significant evidence for a bias in the UK, nor for Italy prior to the introduction of the Euro. Since January 2002, however, the inflation rate in Italy has been underestimated by at least 6 percentage points.

Inflation Targeting and Nonlinear Policy Rules: The Case of Asymmetric Preferences

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of a new framework for monetary policy analysis in which the decision makers are allowed to weight differently positive and negative deviations of inflation and output from the target values. Reduced-form and structural estimates of the central bank first order condition indicate that the preferences of the Fed have been highly asymmetric only before 1979, with the response to output contractions being larger than the response to output expansions of the same magnitude. This asymmetry is shown to induce an average inflation bias of 1.11% that appears to have substantially contributed to the great inflation of the 1960s and 1970s

Central Bank Design in General Equilibrium

We study the effects of alternative institutional arrangements for the determination of monetary policy in the context of a capital-theoretic, general equilibrium economy. We consider three institutional arrangements for determining monetary policy. The first, unconditional majority voting, always leads to a substantial inflation bias. The second, a simple form of bargaining which we interpret as a policy board, generally improves on the unconditional majority voting outcome. Finally,we consider a constitutional rule which always achieves the social optimum.

Effet de discipline et effet de crédibilité de l’ancrage nominal

This article presents sorne econometric tests. The first specification sizes the total effect on inflation. The second specification adds base money supply in order to size discipline effects. The remainder effect is supposed to be a pure credibility effect. Both regimes have a low inflation bias relying more on discipline effects for CBA and on long lasting fixity for the Franc Zone. lEI classification : C22, C23, E51, E52, F31, F32, F33

Consumers' Opinion of Inflation Bias Due to Quality Improvements

Measurement of quality changes has proven to be an especially difficult aspect of calculating unbiased rates of inflation. We propose a new methodology of capturing quality improvements based on consumer focus groups and apply this methodology in an environment where quality changes might be expected to be especially rapid and extensive, a post-communist transition economy. We find that the methodology indicates a substantial understatement of quality improvements during transition, and, therefore, a substantial overstatement of inflation resulting in a serious downward bias in growth rate estimates for post-communist economies. The move to free markets has apparently improved consumers welfare more by improving what they can purchase than by increasing how much they can purchase. Overall, mismeasurement of quality changes may have understated Czech growth rates during the first decade after communism by as much as 5 percentage points per year.

Inflationary bias in middle to late transition Czech Republic

A series of studies has now confirmed the Filer and Hanousek’s [Economic Systems 24 (2000) 285] suggestion that inflation mismeasurement during the transition is a serious problem of the same relative magnitude (and greater absolute magnitude), as in advanced market economies. During the 1990s in the Czech Republic, inflation was overstated by more than four percentage points a year. The largest portion of this bias is due to uncaptured quality changes. In effect, Czech consumers are living considerably better after the fall of communism, but this increase in living standards is manifested through better quality, rather than greater quantities of goods consumed.

Unemployment, welfare and optimal monetary policy: convergence probability

Using a rigorous convergence probability, this note shows why mathematic models are inconsistent with empirical evidence. Using a dynamic quadratic cointegration, a new theory of the concave utility shows that below the optimum, the volatility has a positive impact upon output. Beyond the optimum, the volatility of policy has a negative impact upon output and a positive impact upon the unemployment rate. In this new methodology, our equilibrium targets minimize inflation bias and fiscal bias. First, we compute the equilibrium and optimal policy, then reduce the heteroschedasticity, and finally estimate the convergence probability. Our surprising solution is individually rational and feasible while the budget is balanced over business cycles. For the problem of n＞1 governments or agents, an agent estimates and proposes the maximum non-zero equilibrium which is most acceptable to all participants and outperforms the Nash noncooperative equilibrium. This solves the games and scientific problems unrelated to games as n→∞, regardless of whether the proposal is accepted voluntarily or not.

A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy and Robust Control

This paper applies the robust control approach to a simple positive theory of monetary policy, when the central bank's model of the economy is subject to misspecifications.It is shown that a central bank should react more aggressively to supply shocks when the model misspecifications grow larger.Moreover, the model misspecifications aggravate the inflation bias and a trade-off between output stabilisation and inflation worsens when the uncertainty surrounding the central bank's model increases.This implies that the larger the model misspecifications are, the more inflation-averse the central bank should be. Key words: risk-sensitivity, robust control theory, monetary policy, Brainard conservatism, model uncertainty JEL classification numbers: E58

Recession aversion, output and the Kydland–Prescott Barro–Gordon model

This paper explores the relationship between the Kydland–Prescott Barro–Gordon model and models with asymmetric policy preferences. While both yield an inflation bias, recession aversion dampens the output effects of contractionary supply shocks. Some inflation may, therefore, reflect policy preferences.

Common Currencies vs. Monetary Independence

We study the optimal monetary policy in a two-country open-economy model under two monetary arrangements: (a) multiple currencies controlled by independent policy makers; (b) common currencies with a centralized policy maker. Our findings suggest that: (i) monetary policy competition leads to higher long-term inflation and interest rates with large welfare losses; (ii) the inflation bias and the consequent losses are larger when countries are unable to commit to future policies; (iii) the welfare losses from higher long-term inflation dominates the welfare costs of losing the ability to react optimally to shocks.

The inflation bias revisited: theory and some international evidence

The Kydland–Prescott, Barro–Gordon inflation bias result hinges on policymakers aiming at employment above potential. This has been questioned by academics and policymakers on the ground of realism. We show that even if policymakers target the normal level of employment, a bias arises if they are uncertain about economic conditions and are more sensitive to employment below than above normal. This view implies a positive association between inflation and the variance of output shocks. Cross‐sectional empirical evidence from OECD economies supports this implication. We also discuss the consequences for the transparency of monetary policy and for central bank reform.

Monetary Discretion, Pricing Complementarity, and Dynamic Multiple Equilibria

In a plain-vanilla New Keynesian model with two-period staggered price-setting, discretionary monetary policy leads to multiple equilibria. Complementarity between the pricing decisions of forward-looking firms underlies the multiplicity, which is intrinsically dynamic in nature. At each point in time, the discretionary monetary authority optimally accommodates the level of predetermined prices when setting the money supply because it is concerned solely about real activity. Hence, if other firms set a high price in the current period, an individual firm will optimally choose a high price because it knows that the monetary authority next period will accommodate with a high money supply. Under commitment, the mechanism generating complementarity is absent: the monetary authority commits not to respond to future predetermined prices. We compute a traditional inflation bias equilibrium, in which price-setters are optimistic, rationally expecting small adjustments by other firms. But there is another steady-state equilibrium in which price setters are pessimistic and inflation is much higher. Further, we find that there are multiple equilibria at a point in time, not just in steady states. In a stochastic setting with equilibrium selection each period determined by an i.i.d. sunspot, there is greater inflation bias on average than if price-setters were always optimistic. The sunspot realization also has real effects: periods of higher than average inflation are accompanied by low output. Thus, increased real volatility may be an additional cost of discretion in monetary policy.

Multiplicative uncertainty in a model without inflationary bias

This paper shows that an increase in the degree of multiplicative uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of monetary policy will reduce social loss when policymaker’s preferences are highly uncertain. This result is still valid even when there is no distortion in the market.

Inflation and Openness with Non-Atomistic Wage-Setters

This paper analyses the impact of trade openness on inflation in a strategic framework characterized by monopolistic production in the domestic sector and unionized labour markets. By stressing the interplay between internal and external sources of economic distortion, we show that the economy's inflationary bias reduces up to a critical level of trade openness. Beyond this threshold, wage setters may be induced to behave more aggressively in open economies, leading to higher equilibrium inflation. Based on a regression analysis that investigates the combined effect of labour market institutions and openness on inflation across nineteen OECD economies, we show that inflation is negatively related to openness when wage bargaining is decentralized, while there is virtually no link between openness and inflation at higher levels of wage centralization.

Why Money Talks and Wealth Whispers: Monetary Uncertainty and Mystique: A Reply

This paper analyzes the effect of monetary uncertainty on the inflationary bias and the variance of output and inflation. Monetary policy uncertainty is modeled as a shock to the central banker’s preference for inflation stabilization relative to output stabilization that cannot be observed by the public. We find that the mean and variance of inflation increase with the variance of this preference shock. However, unlike other studies, we find that monetary uncertainty may very well have a positive effect on output stabilization and therefore also on society’s welfare.