The Inflation-Targeting Debate

Over the past fifteen years, a significant number of industrialized and middle-income countries have adopted inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policymaking. As the name suggests, in such inflation-targeting regimes, the central bank is responsible for achieving a publicly announced target for the inflation rate. While the objective of controlling inflation enjoys wide support among both academic experts and policymakers, and while the countries that have followed this model have generally experienced good macroeconomic outcomes, many important questions about inflation targeting remain.

In Inflation Targeting, a distinguished group of contributors explores the many underexamined dimensions of inflation targeting—its potential, its successes, and its limitations—from both a theoretical and an empirical standpoint, and for both developed and emerging economies. The volume opens with a discussion of the optimal formulation of inflation-targeting policy and continues with a debate about the desirability of such a model for the United States. The concluding chapters discuss the special problems of inflation targeting in emerging markets, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.

Ben S. Bernanke is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. He is the author of numerous books and coauthor of Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience. Michael Woodford is the John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University. He is the author of Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy and coeditor of the Handbook of Macroeconomics.