IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedfwp/2001-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pre-commitment, the timeless perspective, and policymaking from behind a veil of uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Dennis

Abstract

Woodford (1999) develops the notion of a \"timelessly optimal\" pre-commitment policy. This paper uses a simple business cycle model to illustrate this notion. We show that timelessly optimal policies are not unique and that they are not necessarily better than the time-consistent solution. Further, we describe a method for constructing optimal pre-commitment rules in an environment where the policymaker does not know the initial state of the economy. This latter solution is useful for characterizing the benefits policymakers extract through exploiting initial conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Dennis, 2001. "Pre-commitment, the timeless perspective, and policymaking from behind a veil of uncertainty," Working Paper Series 2001-19, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2001-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp01-19bk.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert King & Alexander L. Wolman, 1999. "What Should the Monetary Authority Do When Prices Are Sticky?," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 349-404, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Currie,David & Levine,Paul, 2009. "Rules, Reputation and Macroeconomic Policy Coordination," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521104609, September.
    3. Bennett T. McCallum & Edward Nelson, 2004. "Timeless perspective vs. discretionary monetary policy in forward-looking models," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 86(Mar), pages 43-56.
    4. Amato, Jeffery D. & Laubach, Thomas, 2004. "Implications of habit formation for optimal monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 305-325, March.
    5. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1.
    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. Carl Walsh, 2003. "Speed Limit Policies: The Output Gap and Optimal Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 265-278, March.
    2. Lars E. O. Svensson & Michael Woodford, 2004. "Implementing Optimal Policy through Inflation-Forecast Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: The Inflation-Targeting Debate, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Jensen, Christian & McCallum, Bennett T., 2002. "The non-optimality of proposed monetary policy rules under timeless perspective commitment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 163-168, October.
    4. McCallum, Bennett T., 2015. "Nominal GDP targeting: Policy rule or discretionary splurge?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 76-80.
    5. Marina Azzimonti-Renzo & Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte & Jorge Soares, 2003. "Optimal public investment with and without government commitment," Working Paper 03-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    6. Alexander L. Wolman, 2001. "A primer on optimal monetary policy with staggered price-setting," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Fall, pages 27-52.

    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. Dennis, Richard & Soderstrom, Ulf, 2006. "How Important Is Precommitment for Monetary Policy?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(4), pages 847-872, June.
    2. Dennis, Richard, 2010. "When is discretion superior to timeless perspective policymaking?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 266-277, April.
    3. Christian Jensen & Bennett T. Mccallum, 2010. "Optimal Continuation versus the Timeless Perspective in Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(6), pages 1093-1107, September.
    4. Alexei Onatski & Noah Williams, 2010. "Empirical and policy performance of a forward‐looking monetary model," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 145-176, January.
    5. Nessen, Marianne & Vestin, David, 2005. "Average Inflation Targeting," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 837-863, October.
    6. Levine, Paul & Pearlman, Joseph, 2011. "Computation of LQ Approximations to Optimal Policy Problems in Different Information Settings under Zero Lower Bound Constraints," Dynare Working Papers 10, CEPREMAP.
    7. Roberts John M., 2005. "How Well Does the New Keynesian Sticky-Price Model Fit the Data?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-39, September.
    8. Aubhik Khan & Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2001. "The pitfalls of monetary discretion," Working Paper 01-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    9. Campbell Leith & Ioana Moldovan & Raffaele Rossi, 2012. "Optimal Monetary Policy in a New Keynesian Model with Habits in Consumption," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(3), pages 416-435, July.
    10. Jensen Christian, 2020. "Discretion rather than rules? Outdated optimal commitment plans versus discretionary policymaking," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-9, January.
    11. Lars E. O. Svensson & Michael Woodford, 2004. "Implementing Optimal Policy through Inflation-Forecast Targeting," NBER Chapters, in: The Inflation-Targeting Debate, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Woodford Michael, 2002. "Inflation Stabilization and Welfare," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-53, February.
    13. Henrik Jensen, 2002. "Targeting Nominal Income Growth or Inflation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 928-956, September.
    14. repec:pri:cepsud:84svensson is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Pontiggia, Dario, 2008. "Commitment policy and optimal positive long-run inflation," MPRA Paper 9534, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Jeanfils, P., 2001. "A Guided Tour of the World of Rational Expectations Models and Optimal Policies," Papers 16, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
    17. Jensen, Christian & McCallum, Bennett T., 2002. "The non-optimality of proposed monetary policy rules under timeless perspective commitment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 163-168, October.
    18. Olivier Loisel, 2004. "Monetary policy rules to preclude booms and busts," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2003 56, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    19. Livio Stracca, 2007. "A Speed Limit Monetary Policy Rule for the Euro Area," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 21-41, March.
    20. André Minella, 2002. "Optimal Monetary Policy, Gains from Commitment, and Inflation Persistence," Working Papers Series 45, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    21. Christian Jensen, 2006. "Expectations, Learning, and Discretionary Policymaking," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(4), December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy; Business cycles;

    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:fedfwp:2001-19. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.