The Book Series on “Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies” of the Central Bank of Chile publishes new research on central banking and economics in general, with special emphasis on issues and fields that are relevant to economic policies in developing economies. The volumes are published ...

On 16 December 2008 the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) lowered the federal funds rate—its traditional monetary policy instrument—to essentially zero in response to the most severe U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression. Because U.S. currency carries an interest ...

From a theoretical point of view and as we will show the presence of both price and wage rigidities implies that to the extent that fiscal policy is unresponsive to shocks full price stability is not optimal. In this paper we study optimal monetary and exchange rate policy in a small open economy with ...

Both policymakers and economists increasingly accept that the main medium- to long-run goal of monetary policy is the pursuit of price stability, defined as maintaining a low and stable rate of inflation. A high and variable inflation rate is socially and economically costly.

After a long history of high and volatile inflation, the Central Bank of Chile began implementing its monetary policy in the early 1990s by announcing yearly targets for inflation. This new framework was the first step toward a full-fledged inflation-targeting setup, although the Central Bank continued ...

When inflation is chronic, firms develop indexation practices that automatically tie the growth of prices, wages, and other contracts to the performance of some comprehensive price index. The microeconomic advantages of indexation are evident and derive from the immunization of the relative price ...

Monetary policy comprises the rules and actions adopted by the central bank to achieve its objectives. In most countries the primary goal of monetary policy is price stability. However, the mandate of many central banks also encompasses other objectives, including attainment of fullemployment, domestic ...