In this paper we offer a justification for the observed wide variation in monetary practices across industrial countries. We claim that differences in the monetary policy rule adopted may simply reflect differences in economic structure and, in particular, in the types of shocks encountered and nominal rigidities present in various countries. We find that a case for inflation targeting can be made when external shocks are the prevalent source of volatility in the economy -a likely scenario for a small open economy. A policy of strict inflation targeting performs best when the main source of nominal rigidity is to be found in the labour market, while a policy of flexible inflation targeting that also puts some emphasis on exchange rate volatility has superior performance when the main source of nominal rigidity is in the goods market. Domestic supply shocks, on the other hand, call for greater tolerance of short-run inflation movements, especially in the presence of nominal wage rigidities.脙 We thank Fabio Ghironi, Alan Stockman and two anonymous referees for valuable comments and discussions. The views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of their affiliations or of any other person associated with them.
No abstract
We revisit Friedman's case for flexible exchange rates in a small open economy with several distortions and rigidities and a variety of domestic and external shocks. We find that, for external shocks, the flexible exchange rate regime outperforms the fixed regime independent of the source of domestic nominal rigidities provided that the monetary authorities pursue a policy of strict inflation targeting. For domestic supply shocks, a joint policy of a flexible exchange rate and strict inflation targeting fares well when the main source of nominal rigidities is in the domestic goods markets, but not if rigidities arise in the labor markets.
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