Finance and Economics Discussion Series

Monetary Policy in a Forward-Looking Input-Output Economy

Brad E. Strum
2008-33

Abstract: This paper examines the implications for monetary policy of sticky prices in both final and intermediate goods in a New Keynesian model. Both optimal policy under commitment and discretionary policy, which is the minimization of a simple loss function, are studied. Consumer utility losses under alternative simple loss functions are compared, including their robustness to model and shock misperceptions, and parameter uncertainty. Targeting inflation in both consumer and intermediate goods performs better than targeting a single price index; price-level targeting of both consumer and intermediate goods prices performs significantly better. Moreover, targeting prices in both sectors yields superior robustness properties.

Keywords: Monetary policy, intermediate goods, inflation targeting, price-level targeting