Macro Seminars Amsterdam

Speaker(s)
Jean-Paul L'Huillier (Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, Italy)
Date
Friday, 8 May 2015
Location
Amsterdam

We illustrate an intuitive channel through which price stickiness limits the ability of a central bank to improve welfare through stabilization policy. If the central bank uses inflation to obtain information about nominal spending, sticky prices impair the learning ability of the central bank and hence its ability to implement the right stabilization policy. Inflation targeting makes prices stickier, and worsens this learning problem. The key is a microfounded information-based model for price stickiness: taking into account how agents react to the adoption of inflation targeting makes explicit a basic conflict between inflation targeting and stabilization policy. Joint with William R. Zame.