IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedmqr/y1991isprp16-20nv.15no.2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Defending zero inflation: all for naught

Author

Listed:
  • W. Lee Hoskins

Abstract

Economists and policymakers disagree on the lengths central banks should go in pursuit of price stability and, in fact, on exactly what price stability means. This essay advocates that central banks try to maintain stable price levels in their countries, and it argues that the benefits of achieving this objective are worth the transition costs. The essay reviews some of the relevant academic literature on the economic effects of inflation and specifically addresses the issues of transition cost, fiscal dominance, and credibility.

Suggested Citation

  • W. Lee Hoskins, 1991. "Defending zero inflation: all for naught," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 15(Spr), pages 16-20.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmqr:y:1991:i:spr:p:16-20:n:v.15no.2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr1522.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr1522.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas F. Cooley & Gary D. Hansen, 1991. "The welfare costs of moderate inflations," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 483-518.
    2. Chari, V V & Christiano, Lawrence J & Kehoe, Patrick J, 1991. "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy: Some Recent Results," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(3), pages 519-539, August.
    3. David E. Altig & Charles T. Carlstrom, 1991. "Bracket creep in the age of indexing: have we solved the problem?," Working Papers (Old Series) 9108, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    4. Laurence Ball & Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1990. "Inflation and Uncertainty at Long and Short Horizons," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 21(1), pages 215-254.
    5. Summers, Lawrence, 1991. "How Should Long-Term Monetary Policy Be Determined? Panel Discussion," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 23(3), pages 625-631, August.
    6. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1990. "Deflating the case for zero inflation," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 14(Sum), pages 2-11.
    7. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1972. "Expectations and the neutrality of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 103-124, April.
    8. David E. Lebow & John M. Roberts & David J. Stockton, 1992. "Economic performance under price stability," Working Paper Series / Economic Activity Section 125, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dimitri B. Papadimitriou & L. Randall Wray, 1994. "Flying Blind: The Federal Reserve's Experiment with Unobservables," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_124, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Samantha Johnson, 1993. "The costs of inflation revisited," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 56, March.
    3. Ireland, Peter N., 1995. "Optimal disinflationary paths," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1429-1448, November.
    4. Michael T. Belongia, 1992. "Selecting an intermediate target variable for monetary policy when the goal is price stability," Working Papers 1992-008, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    5. Kenny, Geoff & McGettigan, Donal, 1996. "Non-Traded, Traded and Aggregate Inflation In Ireland (Part 2)," Research Technical Papers 3B/RT/96, Central Bank of Ireland.
    6. Willem Thorbeck, 1997. "Disinflationary Monetary Policy and the Distribution of Income," Macroeconomics 9711008, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. W. Lee Hoskins & Mark S. Sniderman, 1992. "Price Stability: The Policy and Research Perspectives," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 55-63, Winter.
    2. Stanley Fischer, 1995. "Modern Approaches to Central Banking," NBER Working Papers 5064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. CHARLES T. Carlstrom & WILLIAM T. Gavin, 1993. "Zero Inflation: Transition Costs And Shoe Leather Benefits," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 11(1), pages 9-17, January.
    4. Samantha Johnson, 1993. "The costs of inflation revisited," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 56, March.
    5. Stanley Fischer, 1996. "Why are central banks pursuing long-run price stability?," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 7-34.
    6. Rösl, Gerhard, 2006. "Regionalwährungen in Deutschland: Lokale Konkurrenz für den Euro?," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2006,43, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    7. Michael T. Kiley, 1998. "Monetary policy under neoclassical and New-Keynesian Phillips Curves, with an application to price level and inflation targeting," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1998-27, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie & Uribe, Martín, 2010. "The Optimal Rate of Inflation," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 13, pages 653-722, Elsevier.
    9. Vinayagathasan, Thanabalasingam, 2013. "Inflation and economic growth: A dynamic panel threshold analysis for Asian economies," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 31-41.
    10. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    11. Niemann, Stefan & Pichler, Paul & Sorger, Gerhard, 2013. "Public debt, discretionary policy, and inflation persistence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1097-1109.
    12. Simplice ASONGU, 2011. "Why Do French Civil Law Countries Have Higher Levels Of Financial Efficiency," Journal of Advanced Research in Law and Economics, ASERS Publishing, vol. 2(4), pages 94-108.
    13. Kenny, Geoff & McGettigan, Donal, 1997. "Low Inflation or Price Stability? A Look at the Issues," Research Technical Papers 3/RT/97, Central Bank of Ireland.
    14. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Johannes Wieland, 2012. "The Optimal Inflation Rate in New Keynesian Models: Should Central Banks Raise Their Inflation Targets in Light of the Zero Lower Bound?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(4), pages 1371-1406.
    15. Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2004. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy under sticky prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 198-230, February.
    16. Gapen Michael T. & Cosimano Thomas F., 2005. "Solving Ramsey Problems with Nonlinear Projection Methods," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 1-38, June.
    17. James Peery Cover & Paul Pecorino, 2005. "Price and Output Stability under Price‐Level Targeting," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 152-166, July.
    18. Grier, Kevin B. & Perry, Mark J., 1998. "On inflation and inflation uncertainty in the G7 countries," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 671-689, August.
    19. Ball, Laurence & Croushore, Dean, 2003. "Expectations and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(4), pages 473-484, August.
    20. James Peery Cover & Paul Pecorino, 2005. "Price and Output Stability under Price-Level Targeting," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 152-166, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation (Finance);

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedmqr:y:1991:i:spr:p:16-20:n:v.15no.2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.