The effectiveness of central bank forward guidance under inflation and price-level targeting

This paper examines the effectiveness of central bank forward guidance under inflation and price-level targeting monetary policies. The results show that the beneficial effects of forward guidance increase if a central bank pursues price-level targeting instead of inflation targeting. Output and inflation respond more favorably to forward guidance with price-level targeting than inflation targeting. A monetary policy rule that aggressively reacts to inflation and includes interest rate inertia narrows the performance gap between the two policy regimes. However, forward guidance with price-level targeting is still preferred to forward guidance with inflation targeting after performing multiple robustness checks.