Strengthening the Monetary Policy Framework in Korea

Money too tight to mention: The Reserve Bank of Australia’s financial stability mandate and low inflation

Banco de la República is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023. This is a very significant anniversary and one that provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution the Bank has made to the country’s development. Its track record as guarantor of monetary stability has established it as the one independent state institution that generates the greatest confidence among Colombians due to its transparency, management capabilities, and effective compliance with the central banking and cultural responsibilities entrusted to it by the Constitution and the Law. On a date as important as this, the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) pays tribute to the generations of governors and officers whose commitment and dedication have contributed to the growth of this institution.1 Banco de la República’s mandate was confirmed in the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 where the citizens had the opportunity to elect the seventy people who would have the task of drafting a new constitution. The leaders of the three political movements with the most votes were elected as chairs to the Assembly, and this tripartite presidency reflected the plurality and the need for consensus among the different political groups to move the reform forward. Among the issues considered, the National Constitutional Assembly gave special importance to monetary stability. That is why they decided to include central banking and to provide Banco de la República with the necessary autonomy to use the instruments for which they are responsible without interference from other authorities. The constituent members understood that ensuring price stability is a state duty and that the entity responsible for this task must be enshrined in the Constitution and have the technical capability and institutional autonomy necessary to adopt the decisions they deem appropriate to achieve this fundamental objective in coordination with the general economic policy. In particular, Article 373 established that “the State, through Banco de la República, shall ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of the currency,” a provision that coincided with the central banking system adopted by countries that have been successful in controlling inflation. In 1999, in Ruling 481, the Constitutional Court stated that “the duty to maintain the purchasing power of the currency applies to not only the monetary, credit, and exchange authority, i.e., the Board of Banco de la República, but also those who have responsibilities in the formulation and implementation of the general economic policy of the country” and that “the basic constitutional purpose of Banco de la República is the protection of a sound currency. However, this authority must take the other economic objectives of state intervention such as full employment into consideration in their decisions since these functions must be coordinated with the general economic policy.” The reforms to Banco de la República agreed upon in the Constitutional Assembly of 1991 and in Act 31/1992 can be summarized in the following aspects: i) the Bank was assigned a specific mandate: to maintain the purchasing power of the currency in coordination with the general economic policy; ii) the BDBR was designatedas the monetary, foreign exchange, and credit authority; iii) the Bank and its Board of Directors were granted a significant degree of independence from the government; iv) the Bank was prohibited from granting credit to the private sector except in the case of the financial sector; v) established that in order to grant credit to the government, the unanimous vote of its Board of Directors was required except in the case of open market transactions; vi) determined that the legislature may, in no case, order credit quotas in favor of the State or individuals; vii) Congress was appointed, on behalf of society, as the main addressee of the Bank’s reporting exercise; and viii) the responsibility for inspection, surveillance, and control over Banco de la República was delegated to the President of the Republic. The members of the National Constitutional Assembly clearly understood that the benefits of low and stable inflation extend to the whole of society and contribute mto the smooth functioning of the economic system. Among the most important of these is that low inflation promotes the efficient use of productive resources by allowing relative prices to better guide the allocation of resources since this promotes economic growth and increases the welfare of the population. Likewise, low inflation reduces uncertainty about the expected return on investment and future asset prices. This increases the confidence of economic agents, facilitates long-term financing, and stimulates investment. Since the low-income population is unable to protect itself from inflation by diversifying its assets, and a high proportion of its income is concentrated in the purchase of food and other basic goods that are generally the most affected by inflationary shocks, low inflation avoids arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth.2 Moreover, low inflation facilitates wage negotiations, creates a good labor climate, and reduces the volatility of employment levels. Finally, low inflation helps to make the tax system more transparent and equitable by avoiding the distortions that inflation introduces into the value of assets and income that make up the tax base. From the monetary authority’s point of view, one of the most relevant benefits of low inflation is the credibility that economic agents acquire in inflation targeting, which turns it into an effective nominal anchor on price levels. Upon receiving its mandate, and using its autonomy, Banco de la República began to announce specific annual inflation targets as of 1992. Although the proposed inflation targets were not met precisely during this first stage, a downward trend in inflation was achieved that took it from 32.4% in 1990 to 16.7% in 1998. At that time, the exchange rate was kept within a band. This limited the effectiveness of monetary policy, which simultaneously sought to meet an inflation target and an exchange rate target. The Asian crisis spread to emerging economies and significantly affected the Colombian economy. The exchange rate came under strong pressure to depreciate as access to foreign financing was cut off under conditions of a high foreign imbalance. This, together with the lack of exchange rate flexibility, prevented a countercyclical monetary policy and led to a 4.2% contraction in GDP that year. In this context of economic slowdown, annual inflation fell to 9.2% at the end of 1999, thus falling below the 15% target set for that year. This episode fully revealed how costly it could be, in terms of economic activity, to have inflation and exchange rate targets simultaneously. Towards the end of 1999, Banco de la República announced the adoption of a new monetary policy regime called the Inflation Targeting Plan. This regime, known internationally as ‘Inflation Targeting,’ has been gaining increasing acceptance in developed countries, having been adopted in 1991 by New Zealand, Canada, and England, among others, and has achieved significant advances in the management of inflation without incurring costs in terms of economic activity. In Latin America, Brazil and Chile also adopted it in 1999. In the case of Colombia, the last remaining requirement to be fulfilled in order to adopt said policy was exchange rate flexibility. This was realized around September 1999, when the BDBR decided to abandon the exchange-rate bands to allow the exchange rate to be freely determined in the market.Consistent with the constitutional mandate, the fundamental objective of this new policy approach was “the achievement of an inflation target that contributes to maintaining output growth around its potential.”3 This potential capacity was understood as the GDP growth that the economy can obtain if it fully utilizes its productive resources. To meet this objective, monetary policy must of necessity play a countercyclical role in the economy. This is because when economic activity is below its potential and there are idle resources, the monetary authority can reduce the interest rate in the absence of inflationary pressure to stimulate the economy and, when output exceeds its potential capacity, raise it. This policy principle, which is immersed in the models for guiding the monetary policy stance, makes the following two objectives fully compatible in the medium term: meeting the inflation target and achieving a level of economic activity that is consistent with its productive capacity. To achieve this purpose, the inflation targeting system uses the money market interest rate (at which the central bank supplies primary liquidity to commercial banks) as the primary policy instrument. This replaced the quantity of money as an intermediate monetary policy target that Banco de la República, like several other central banks, had used for a long time. In the case of Colombia, the objective of the new monetary policy approach implied, in practical terms, that the recovery of the economy after the 1999 contraction should be achieved while complying with the decreasing inflation targets established by the BDBR. The accomplishment of this purpose was remarkable. In the first half of the first decade of the 2000s, economic activity recovered significantly and reached a growth rate of 6.8% in 2006. Meanwhile, inflation gradually declined in line with inflation targets. That was how the inflation rate went from 9.2% in 1999 to 4.5% in 2006, thus meeting the inflation target established for that year while GDP reached its potential level. After this balance was achieved in 2006, inflation rebounded to 5.7% in 2007, above the 4.0% target for that year due to the fact that the 7.5% GDP growth exceeded the potential capacity of the economy.4 After proving the effectiveness of the in

Does monetary policy really matter for environmental protection? The case of inflation targeting

[Author Affiliation]Chi-Young Choi, cychoi@uta.eduYoung Se Kim[Acknowledgment]The authors are grateful to coeditor Kent Kimbrough and two anonymous referees for constructive comments that helped to improve this article. The authors also wish to thank Steve Cecchetti, Kang Liu, Shin-Ichi Nishiyama, Margie Tieslau, Taka Tsuruga, and the seminar participants at the Academia Sinica, National Chung Cheng University, National Sun Yat-Sen University, National Taiwan University, Texas Tech University, and the University of Texas at Arlington for helpful comments and Vikas Kakkar for providing CPI data for Hong Kong. Any remaining errors are the authors'.1. IntroductionVariability in relative prices is known to be a major channel through which inflation can induce welfare costs by impeding an efficient allocation of resources in the economy. Consequently, substantial effort has been devoted in the literature to examining the link between relative price variability (RPV) and aggregate inflation. Although much of the existing theoretical and empirical literature points to a positive monotonic relationship, newer contributions suggest that the relationship between inflation and RPV is more complicated, particularly in terms of its sensitivity to the inflation regime.1The primary purpose of this study is to investigate whether the connection between inflation and RPV is influenced in an important way by the monetary policy framework chosen by a central bank. Specifically, this article focuses on exploring whether the adoption of an inflation targeting (IT) framework exerts any significant impact on RPV as measured by the standard deviations of sectoral inflation rates relative to the aggregate rate. Since it was first implemented in New Zealand more than two decades ago, the popularity of IT has spread, with some twenty-five countries worldwide implementing the framework to date (Freedman and Laxton 2009). The literature is now replete with studies pointing to reductions in both the level and the volatility of inflation in countries that have adopted IT (e.g., Mishkin and Schmidt-Hebbel 2007).2 While studies of the impact of IT on aggregate inflation performance are plentiful, little attention has been paid to the impact of IT on RPV.The question of whether and indeed how IT affects RPV is an important one for several reasons. First, exploring the potential connection between IT and RPV is a worthwhile exercise given the popularity of IT as a monetary framework and the centrality of RPV to the current generation of macromodels. The importance of RPV is recognized in standard New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models, where the variance of relative prices is viewed as a useful summary statistic. As noted by Amano, Ambler, and Rebei (2007), for example, in DSGE models, the optimal rate of target inflation and the optimal variability of inflation relative to output depend on the quantitative effects of price dispersion on macroeconomic equilibrium. Second, answering the question helps us identify the driving force behind the change in RPV, distinguishing between IT adoption itself and its subsequent impact on inflation. If the relationship is monotonically positive, as is often believed in the literature, one should expect that IT adoption would bring about a decline in RPV in the same way as it has led to a decline in inflation. If the relationship is more complex, however, the effect of IT adoption on reducing RPV may hinge on the change in inflation regimes after IT adoption. Third, our answer to the question also sheds additional light on the empirical evidence for the relative effectiveness of IT across different stages of development. While there is strong evidence that developing countries benefit more from IT than industrial countries in combating inflation and its volatility (e.g., Petursson 2004; Lin and Ye 2009), we are aware of no empirical research that has assessed this issue with respect to RPV. …

High and volatile inflation could result in significant negative outcomes leading to loss of social welfare, which underscores the necessity of having in place an effective monetary policy regime. Increasingly larger numbers of countries have shifted to an inflation targeting regime, following the success of those that adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s. Analysing Sri Lanka's monetary policy regime suggests that, monetary targeting, although appropriate for effectively controlling inflation, seems to lack the institutional features that have enabled inflation targeting regimes to achieve low and stable inflation in the long-run. This makes inflation targeting an attractive alternative to countries presently in a monetary targeting regime, experiencing high or volatile inflation. (JEL E42) DOI: 10.4038/ss.v38i1.1221 <em>Staff Studies </em>Volume 38 Numbers 1& 2 2008 p.45-74

This article examines how the analysis of inflation targeting (IT) adoption is affected by allowing for a structural change after adoption, using panel probit models for 60 countries over the period 1985 to 2008. Our findings suggest that there is a structural change after IT adoption. Including the post-adoption period when estimating the factors of IT adoption leads to biased results when interested in the question as of what drives countries’ decision to adopt IT.

The paper assesses the co-movement of local and foreign interest rate for developing countries with a full-fledged inflation targeting framework during and after the 2008 financial crisis. A panel linear optimizing monetary model is estimated by the fixed effects with spatial correlation standard errors over quarterly span from Q12007 to Q2 2019. The results suggest that inflation targeters are highly vulnerable to external monetary shocks, even after years of notable efforts to de-dollarization and complete shift towards a full-fledged inflation targeting. From a regime evaluation prospective, the inflation targeters’ response to world monetary shocks is compared to that of a group of fixed exchange rate rule economies and managed exchange rate countries with other monetary regimes. The findings provide evidence that inflation targeting countries are not different in their interest rate response to world monetary shocks compared to non-inflation targeting countries’, and instead of having more flexibility, inflation targeters show stronger reaction to world monetary shocks. These results are found robust when generated out from different subsamples and under assumptions of strict and flexible inflation targeting and policy inertia. The findings indicate that adopting inflation targeting as a framework for monetary policy does not by itself support the overall macroperformance and independence of monetary policy or force continuing commitment to the inflation targeting conditions.

The financial crisis and its aftermath have raised numerous questions about the appropriate role of financial stability considerations in the conduct of monetary policy. This paper develops a simple example of the possible connections between financial stability and monetary policy. We find that even without an explicit financial stability goal for monetary policy, financial stability considerations arise naturally in the context of standard models of optimal monetary policy if the potential magnitude of financial stability shocks is affected by the stance of policy. In this case, similar to the classic analysis of Brainard (1967), policymakers may seek to reduce the variance of output by scaling back the level of policy accommodation provided today in response to an aggregate demand shock relative to the level that would otherwise be provided. However, the policy implications of this possible connection between monetary policy and financial stability are complex even in the simple example considered here. In particular, financial stability considerations may also increase the relative benefits of following a commitment policy relative to a discretionary strategy.

Since the 1990s there have been major changes in the way monetary policy is conducted. Since other monetary strategies did not result in the desired outcome, the first concept of inflation targeting was presented in New Zealand (1990), then in Canada (1991), England (1992), Sweden and Finland (1993), Australia and Spain (1994), Israel, Chile, Brasil, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Serbia and other countries. Thus, the application of this monetary regime has spread from economically developed to developing countries. This article examines the adoption, the formal framework for inflation targeting and the experience of the two countries that were leaders in the adoption of this modern strategy, New Zealand and Canada. At the time of the announcement of the inflation targets, inflation in both countries was around 6%. However, there are differences regarding the time frame. So, in New Zealand in a shorter period of time, credibility should have been achieved regarding the imbalance of monetary and fiscal policy. While, on the other hand, a longer time frame is envisaged for the Central Bank of Canada regarding achieving greater flexibility to mitigate price shocks. After all the above, it can be concluded that both observed countries (Canada and New Zealand) during the period 2008-2017, achieved positive effects from inflation targeting. In this sense inflation rates in the target range of 1-3% were achieved, except for a few years after the financial crisis (2008-2011), but after certain revisions of the formal framework, both countries successfully fought for greater economic growth and financial stability. The inflation targeting regime proved to be very successful in achieving the set targets, so both Central Banks continued to constantly update the formal and informal inflation targeting frameworks, in order to continuously achieve the expected effects.

The notion of an ‘independent’ central bank has dominated monetary policy debates for the past three decades. The arguments for the political independence of central banks are closely related to the adoption of ‘inflation targeting’. The arguments for an independent central bank are based on the ‘credibility’ of the ‘conservative’ central bank in comparison to government decision making. The independence of a central bank has been a matter of independence from government but not independence from the grip of the ‘new consensus in macroeconomics’ nor from the interests of the banking and financial sector. That independence has also supported a lack of co-ordination between monetary and fiscal policies, diminishing the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies. In addition, there remain doubts about the effectiveness of ‘inflation targeting’ on the achievement of low inflation. The policy mandates of central banks have begun to shift towards financial stability and paying attention to issues of inequality and the climate emergency.

Introduction. The Colombian economy continued to make progress in the adjustment process required to correct macroeconomic imbalances and control the inflationary pressure that had accumulated during the first half of 2023 from the various supply shocks and rapid expansion of demand during 2021 and 2022, which exceeded the economy’s potential growth. The ongoing economic adjustment has been made possible by the moderation of domestic demand growth and the gradual unwinding of the supply shocks that raised production costs. Domestic demand began to slow down in the last few months of 2022 and contracted -0.2% in the first quarter of this year due to slower growth in household consumption and a fall in gross capital formation. Lower international prices for raw materials, the gradual normalization of supply chains, and the appreciation of the exchange rate, in turn, have contributed to dissipate supply shocks. This has been reflected in a decrease in annual producer price inflation from a level of 19.2% at the end of 2022 to 4.7% in June 2023.1 The sluggishness of domestic demand has been reflected in a progressive slowdown in economic activity. Thus, the GDP registered an annual growth of 3.0% in the first quarter of 2023, a rate equivalent to one third of the average annual growth noted during the first three quarters of 2022 (9.1%). According to the economic monitoring indicator (EMI) prepared by DANE, this loss of strength continued in April and May as variations in this indicator of -0.8% and 0.6%, respectively, were registered compared to the same months in 2022. These results were lower than those seen in March (1.4%) in the seasonally and calendar-adjusted EMI series. This suggests that GDP growth will continue to decline in the second quarter and is consistent with the technical staff’s forecast that GDP growth will be slightly below 1.0% for 2023. In spite of the ongoing economic slowdown, the labor market continues to show strength as can be deduced from the continuous decline in the unemployment rate in the national aggregate up to the moving quarter ended in May (10.4%). This is its lowest value since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic.2 The slowdown in economic activity was, in part, expected to result from the restrictive monetary policy adopted by Banco de la República to control inflationary pressure. A less expansionary fiscal policy than in 2022 may also be contributing to the lower economic activity based on the forecasts presented in the 2023 Medium-Term Fiscal Framework (MTPF-23). Added to this was a slowdown in foreign demand that was relevant for the country due to the lower growth of our trading partners in an international context of high monetary policy interest rates, inflation rates that exceeded their targets, and high uncertainty generated by the prolongation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) has been reiterating the need to proceed with this adjustment process in its various communications in order to achieve a gradual return of inflation to the 3.0% target, correct macroeconomic imbalances, and ensure the sustainability of economic growth in the long term. The constitutional responsibility that falls on Banco de la República, which was emphasized in the last Report to Congress, requires maintaining low and stable inflation in line with economic policy in general so as to support sustainable economic growth and a bankable foreign balance. Monetary policy decisions have been adopted with the support of the solid institutional and technical basis that supports the inflation targeting regime based on the experience accumulated over more than two decades by the Central Bank. The specific motives that the BDBR has had for undertaking a monetary tightening process and the strongest ones since Banco de la República adopted the inflation targeting strategy have been complex and diverse in nature. Inflationary pressure initially came from foreign and domestic supply shocks that pushed the costs and prices of food and other consumer products up. Added to this was pressure from the exchange rate. These shocks led to an increase in inflation expectations, and this triggered a process of price indexation which was exacerbated by the excess demand that emerged in 2022. The monetary policy response sought to reduce excess demand, contain the rise in expectations, and limit the effects of price indexing by increasing interest rates. All of this creates the right conditions to allow inflation to begin to decline as the supply shocks subside and thereby alleviate cost pressure. This is a process that is being accomplished albeit with some delay, but which, given the time that the monetary policy has been in place, has already begun to produce results as shown by the recent decline in the inflation rate and the downward revision of expectations for it at different periods. In accordance with the constitutional mandate to ensure coordination of monetary policy with the general economic policy in addition to mitigating inflationary pressure, the monetary adjustment has been fulfilling the purpose of correcting macroeconomic imbalances that jeopardize the stability of the Colombian economy. With respect to this, there is no doubt that the 7.3% GDP growth in 2022 was outstanding since it was more than double the global growth (3.5%) and far exceeded the expansion of Latin America and the Caribbean (3.9%) based on IMF figures. Such high economic strength brings important gains in well-being, particularly when it reduces unemployment rates as has been the case in Colombia. However, this growth is unsustainable because it is based on a fiscal situation that is largely in deficit and a worrying increase in household indebtedness. This generated an excess of aggregate demand that not only put upward pressure on inflation and expectations for it but also expanded the current account deficit of the balance of payments to historically high levels for several years. The current account deficit went from an already high level of 5.6% of the GDP in 2021 to one of 6.2% of the GDP in 2022 and was one of the highest seen in Colombia. The increase in the foreign imbalance in 2022 occurred in a year in which international crude oil, coal, and coffee prices remained at favorable levels. This contributed to the positive performance of exports. Nevertheless, in order to cover supply shortages, the economy significantly increased its demand for imports thus preventing a reduction in the foreign imbalance. As a result, the Colombian economy resorted to greater foreign indebtedness either as portfolio investment inflows or as direct indebtedness. All this shows how vulnerable the economy is when it maintains a level of spending that significantly exceeds its income. The restrictive monetary policy, together with the increase in the tax burden, has been inducing a progressive adjustment of these imbalances. The slowdown in domestic demand that began in the fourth quarter of 2022 was accompanied by a moderation in household consumption that had grown 3.0% in the first quarter of 2023 compared to a 9.5% increase in 2022. The latter has been reflected in a slowdown in consumer credit which went from growing at a close to 23% rate per annum at the end of the third quarter of the previous year to just under 7.0% per annum in mid-June 2023. If such a rapid expansion of consumer credit had continued, it could have generated an unsustainable situation in terms of households’ creditworthiness. Likewise, gross capital formation, which performed outstandingly well in 2022, began to show adjustments in its main components. The main source of this correction has been investment in machinery and equipment which, in the first quarter of the year, showed declines in both quarterly and annual terms, mainly in the transportation equipment sector. Along with the progress in correcting the macroeconomic imbalances, total inflation broke off the upward trend it had maintained until March 2023. Indeed, after reaching a level of 13.1% at the end of the previous year, total inflation remained stable at around 13.3% during the first three months of 2023, then began to declineas of April and reached 12.1% in June. Food was the item that contributed most to this change in trend since its annual variation went from 27.8% last December to 14.3% in June. This variation has been offset to some extent by the increase in inflation of regulated products due to successive increases in gasoline prices. Core inflation (excluding food and regulated products), in turn, continues to show rigidity as it stood at 10.5% in June and thus reflected price indexation processes. The services sub-basket has been particularly affected by the indexing which has been compounded by labor cost pressures, rising food prices that have put upward pressure on eating out and the high demand for entertainment services. This behavior should gradually diminish as the effects of monetary policy are eventually passed through to the economy, and the downward trend in inflation is reflected in a downward revision in the public’s expectations of price changes. This is in line with the technical staff’s forecasts and the market’s expectations that anticipate declining inflation over the next two years. 1 This corresponds to the annual change in the domestic supply PPI. 2 At the close of this Report, data was released from the General Integrated Household Survey for June in which the unemployment rate remained stable in its seasonally adjusted measurement of the national aggregate for the quarterly moving average (10.3%) although there was a reduction in the June data. Boxes Box 1 - Recent Changes in the Savings-Investment Balance and its Financing Box 2 - Economic Effects of Indexation and its Prevalence in Colombia Box 3 - Resilience of the Colombian Financial System: Analysis Based on the Recent Period of Banking Stress in

Since the initial launch of inflation targeting in the early 1990s in New Zealand and a few other countries, inflation targeting has become the predominant monetary policy strategy in large advanced and emerging market economies. Inflation targeting has been remarkably successful in anchoring inflation, likely owing to core elements of the framework across central banks. Its reaction process, which adjusts the monetary policy stance to ensure the return of inflation to target, allows it to flexibly incorporate a wide range of factors while limiting the discretionary biases that can contribute to excessive inflation. The emphasis on communications about the inflation outlook promotes transparency and accountability. As a result, inflation targeting central banks have, on balance, managed well the large shocks associated with the Global Financial Crisis and COVID. Even so, there are numerous challenges discussed in this paper that are associated with calibration and communications of forward guidance, quantitative easing/tightening, and financial stability.

This study makes use of a dynamic Taylor‐type model to examine the conduct of monetary policy by central banks that profess to engage in inflation targeting. Previous research regarding inflation targeting and Taylor‐type rules is reviewed and a dynamic Taylor‐type model is developed. Tests for regime shifts upon the adoption of inflation targeting indicate a significant change in policy in each of the nations in the study for which sufficient data were available. Next, the central bank reaction functions were estimated. Results suggest that most of the central banks conducted a policy of inflation targeting by seeking to contain inflationary pressures rather than reacting to current inflation.

The transition to an inflation targeting regime represents a pivotal shift for any central bank in shaping its monetary policy framework. This transformation is typically preceded by significant structural changes in the economy, including the development of financial markets, the adoption of fiscal discipline, and the reform of exchange rate regimes, with the transition to floating exchange rates being a critical prerequisite. Initially introduced by New Zealand in 1990, inflation targeting has since gained prominence as a strategy for achieving price stability. While not all developed countries explicitly adopt this regime, the objective of price stability remains a cornerstone of their monetary policies, often integrated alongside other economic goals. For emerging economies, the adoption of inflation targeting has coincided with extensive economic restructuring and reforms. Key reforms include enhancing the independence of central banks, transitioning to more flexible exchange rate regimes, and developing robust capital markets. These changes reflect efforts to meet the institutional and technical prerequisites necessary for the successful implementation of inflation targeting. As a result, many emerging countries have adopted or are preparing to adopt this regime as a credible alternative to monetary targeting and fixed exchange rate frameworks.

Contents: Introduction Claude Gnos and Louis-Philippe Rochon PART I: MONETARY AND MACROECONOMIC POLICY 1. Wage Bargaining and Monetary Policy in a Kaleckian Monetary Distribution and Growth Model: Making Sense of the NAIRU Eckhard Hein 2. Price and Wage Determination and the Inflation Barrier: Moving Beyond the Phillips Curve Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer 3. Central Bank Governance, the Euthanasia of the Rentier and Interest Rate Policy: A Note on Post-Keynesian Monetary Policy after Taylor Louis-Philippe Rochon 4. The Macroeconomic Governance of the European Monetary Union: A Keynesian Perspective Angel Asensio 5. Inflation Targeting and Monetary Policy Governance: The Case of the European Central Bank Sergio Rossi PART II: MACROECONOMIC POLICY AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 6. Enforcing the IMF in the Global Economy: An Institutional Analysis Jean-Pierre Allegret and Philippe Dulbecco 7. Too Much Consensus Could Be Harmful: Assessing the Degree of Implementation of Stabilization and Structural Policies and their Impact on Growth Eric Berr, Francois Combarnous and Eric Rougier 8. The Political Economy of Global Economic Disgovernance Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira 9. Tobin, Globalization and Capital Flows Robert W. Dimand 10. The Impact of FDI on Capital Formation: The Case of Mexico Claudia Maya 11. Financial Liberalization, Economic Growth and Rents Domenica Tropeano 12. The Argentine Jefes Program: From a Post-Financial Crisis Emergency Safety Net to a Long-Run Policy Promoting Development Corinne Pastoret Index