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Title

Inflation Targeting in a Small Open Economy
Authors

N. Bharucha
C. Kent
Journal / Anthology

Research Discussion Paper 9807, Reserve Bank of Australia
Year: 1998
Description

This paper investigates the merits of aggregate inflation targeting compared with non-traded inflation targeting using a model of a small open economy producing traded and non-traded goods. An important innovation of our approach is that we isolate the effects of exchange rate, supply and demand shocks by analyzing the conditional variance of macroeconomic variables. We show that monetary policy should be more activist in response to exchange rate shocks for a flexible aggregate inflation target than for a flexible non-traded inflation target. However, in response to demand and supply shocks monetary policy is more activist for a flexible non-traded inflation target. The result is robust to the inclusion of foward-looking expectation, gradual exchange rate pass-through, and discretionary policy. In order to avoid excessive volatility in product and financial markets, it may be preferable to target inflation over a medium-term horizon.
Subject

*Business and Economics