This paper presents a critical appraisal of inflation targeting as a monetary policy regime for emerging markets. It is shown that this policy, if understood as a strict commitment to a CPI inflation target, shares many features with exchange rate targeting and is quite different from inflexible exchange rates under money growth rules. Inflation targets are vulnerable to speculative attacks, although less so than exchange rate targets. They perform worse than exchange rate targets when policy sustainability is limited. And their relative performance under exogenous shocks, not surprisingly, depends on the nature and direction of those shocks. Given this lack of an obvious advantage over exchange rate targets, the real attraction of inflation targets may be that they give the policymaker discretion. This, in the context of many emerging markets, has to be a cause for concern. Keywords: intellectual property rights, copyright, sui generis protection of expressive material, economics of information-goods, open science, "fair use," scientific databases.
JEL Classification: H4, K39, O31, O34 -->
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Paper provided by Stanford University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
00022.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods K39 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Other O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives O34 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Intellectual Property Rights
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