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We analyse the interaction between private agents? uncertainty about inflation target and the central bank's data uncertainty. In our model, private agents update their perceived inflation target and the central bank estimates unobservable economic shocks as well as the perceived inflation target. Under those two uncertainties, the learning process of both private agents and the central bank causes higher order beliefs to become relevant, and this mechanism is capable of generating high persistence and volatility of inflation even though the underlying shocks are purely transitory. We also find that the persistence and volatility become smaller as the inflation target becomes more credible, that is, the private agents' uncertainty about inflation target (and hence the bank's data uncertainty) diminishes.

We analyse the interaction between private agents' uncertainty about inflation target and the central bank's data uncertainty. In our model, private agents update their perceived inflation target and the central bank estimates unobservable economic shocks as well as the perceived inflation target. Under those two uncertainties, the learning process of both private agents and the central bank causes higher order beliefs to become relevant, and this mechanism is capable of generating high persistence and volatility of inflation even though the underlying shocks are purely transitory. We also find that the persistence and volatility become smaller as the inflation target becomes more credible, that is, the private agents' uncertainty about inflation target (and hence the bank's data uncertainty) diminishes.

AbstractRecent international experience with the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates has rekindled interest in the benefits of inflation targets above 2%. We evaluate whether an increase in the inflation target to 3% or 4% could improve macroeconomic stability in the Canadian economy. We find that the magnitude of the benefits hinges critically on two elements: (i) the availability and effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy (UMP) tools at the effective lower bound and (ii) the level of the real neutral interest rate. In particular, we show that when the real neutral rate is in line with the central tendency of estimates, raising the inflation target yields some improvement in macroeconomic outcomes. There are only modest gains if effective UMP tools are available. In contrast, with a deeply negative real neutral rate, a higher inflation target substantially improves macroeconomic stability regardless of UMP.

This paper investigates the implicit inflation targets of inflation targeting (IT) central banks (CBs). The implicit (perceived) inflation targets of IT CBs derived from their actions (policy interest rates) are calculated before and after IT adoption. We conclude that after adoption of IT implicit targets become significantly lower. Other factors that cause CBs to change their implicit targets are inflation, exchange rate and trade balance. Finally, we find that CBs that do not follow their announced targets miss their inflation targets. The results indicate that IT CBs should follow their announced targets when setting policy interest rates.