Does Inflation Targeting Increase Output Volatility? an International Comparison of Policymakers' Preferences and Outcomes

37 Pages Posted: 6 Feb 2000 Last revised: 17 Oct 2022

See all articles by Stephen G. Cecchetti

Stephen G. Cecchetti

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Brandeis International Business School; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); European Systemic Risk Board

Michael Ehrmann

European Central Bank (ECB); Bank of Canada

Date Written: December 1999

Abstract

Aggregate shocks that move output and inflation in opposite directions create a tradeoff between output and inflation variability, forcing central bankers to make a choice. Differences in the degree of accommodation of shocks lead to disparate variability outcomes, revealing national central banker's relative weight on output and inflation variability in their preferences. We use estimates of the structure of 23 industrialized and developing economies, including nine that target inflation explicitly, together with the realized output and inflation patterns in those countries, to infer the degree of policymakers' inflation variability aversion. Our results suggest that both countries that introduced inflation targeting, and non-targeting European Union countries approaching monetary union, increased their revealed aversion to inflation variability, and likely suffered most increases in output volatility as a result.

Suggested Citation

Cecchetti, Stephen G. and Cecchetti, Stephen G. and Ehrmann, Michael, Does Inflation Targeting Increase Output Volatility? an International Comparison of Policymakers' Preferences and Outcomes (December 1999). NBER Working Paper No. w7426, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=203166

Stephen G. Cecchetti (Contact Author)

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