IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/9903006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Credibility of the Federal Reserve's Monetary Targets

Author

Listed:
  • J. Peter Ferderer

    (The Jerome Levy Economics Institute)

Abstract

In the 1970s the Federal Reserve began a policy of targeting monetary growth. Those who viewed this as a positive development felt that such a policy would allow the Fed to signal its intentions to be firm in its pursuit of an antiinflationary agenda. Moreover, if the Fed could pursue its agenda in a credible manner, the social costs of undertaking such a policy could, presumably, be reduced. In addition, credible monetary growth targets cause the money supply to follow a mean-reverting process. If the money supply and the aggregate price level are strongly related, monetary targets cause the aggregate price level to be mean reverting as well, thereby reducing long-run uncertainty about prices, raising allocative efficiency in capital markets, and increasing economic growth. In this working paper, J. Peter Ferderer explores the history of monetary targeting since the 1970s to determine the extent to which Fed actions have been seen as credible at reducing inflation, and the factors affecting credibility.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Peter Ferderer, 1999. "The Credibility of the Federal Reserve's Monetary Targets," Macroeconomics 9903006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpma:9903006
    Note: Type of Document - Acrobat PDF; prepared on IBM PC; to print on PostScript; pages: 43; figures: included
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mac/papers/9903/9903006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter N. Ireland, 1993. "Price stability under long-run monetary targeting," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Win, pages 25-46.
    2. Thomas J. Sargent, 1982. "The Ends of Four Big Inflations," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation: Causes and Effects, pages 41-98, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Baxter, Marianne, 1985. "The role of expectations in stabilization policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 343-362, May.
    4. Rogoff, Kenneth, 1987. "Reputational constraints on monetary policy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 141-181, January.
    5. Ann-Marie Meulendyke, 1988. "A review of Federal Reserve policy targets and operating guides in recent decades," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 13(Aut), pages 6-17.
    6. Ben Bernanke & Frederic Mishkin, 1992. "Central Bank Behavior and the Strategy of Monetary Policy: Observations from Six Industrialized Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1992, Volume 7, pages 183-238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1984. "The Lucas Critique and the Volcker Deflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 211-215, May.
    8. Blackburn, Keith & Christensen, Michael, 1989. "Monetary Policy and Policy Credibility: Theories and Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 1-45, March.
    9. Walsh, Carl E, 1986. "In Defense of Base Drift," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 692-700, September.
    10. Frankel, Jeffrey A & Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1985. "Commodity Prices, Money Surprises and Fed Credibility," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 17(4), pages 425-438, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Peter Ferderer, J., 1998. "The determinants of monetary target credibility," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 825-841.
    2. Huh, Chan G. & Lansing, Kevin J., 2000. "Expectations, credibility, and disinflation in a small macroeconomic model," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 51-86.
    3. Chan Guk Huh & Kevin J. Lansing, 1998. "Federal Reserve credibility and inflation scares," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 3-16.
    4. Boschen, John F. & Weise, Charles L., 2001. "The Ex Ante Credibility of Disinflation Policy and the Cost of Reducing Inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 323-347, July.
    5. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    6. Ben Bernanke & Frederic Mishkin, 1992. "Central Bank Behavior and the Strategy of Monetary Policy: Observations from Six Industrialized Countries," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1992, Volume 7, pages 183-238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Driffill, John, 1988. "Macroeconomic policy games with incomplete information : A survey," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(2-3), pages 533-541, March.
    8. repec:fgv:epgrbe:v:68:n:2:a:3 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Garcia, Marcio Gomes Pinto & Guillen, Diogo Abry, 2014. "Expectativas Desagregadas, Credibilidade do Banco Central e Cadeias de Markov," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 68(2), June.
    10. Weber, A.A., 1988. "The credibility of monetary policies, policymakers' reputation and the EMS-hypothesis : Empirical evidence from 13 countries," Discussion Paper 1988-3, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    11. Ruge-Murcia, Francisco J, 1995. "Credibility and Changes in Policy Regime," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 176-208, February.
    12. Weber, A.A., 1988. "The credibility of monetary policies, policymakers' reputation and the EMS-hypothesis : Empirical evidence from 13 countries," Other publications TiSEM 7d95e7bb-efff-41a6-8ea2-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Robert Amano & Paul Fenton & David Tessier & Simon van Norden, 1996. "The credibility of monetary policy: a survey of the literature with some simple applications to Caanda," Meeting papers 9610001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Gerlach, Stefan, 2003. "The ECB's Two Pillars," CEPR Discussion Papers 3689, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Michael D. Bordo & Christopher J. Erceg & Andrew T. Levin & Ryan Michaels, 2007. "Three great American disinflations," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    16. Dornbusch, Rudiger & Fischer, Stanley, 1993. "Moderate Inflation," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 7(1), pages 1-44, January.
    17. Qureshi, Irfan, 2016. "Monetarism, Indeterminacy and the Great Inflation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1123, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    18. Ellis, Christopher J. & Holden, Steinar, 1997. "Optimal contract length in a reputational model of monetary policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 227-243, February.
    19. Marc Bassoni & André Cartapanis, 1995. "Autonomie des banques centrales et performances macro-économiques : Un réexamen," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 46(2), pages 415-432.
    20. Jim Granato, 1996. "The Effect of Policy-Maker Reputation and Credibility on Public Expectations," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 8(4), pages 449-470, October.
    21. Ball, Richard & Rausser, Gordon C., 1993. "Governance structures and the durability of economic reforms; evidence from inflation stabilizations," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt7qt9r513, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

    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:wpa:wuwpma:9903006. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.