TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ball,Laurence
AU  - Sheridan,Niamh
TI  - Does Inflation Targeting Matter?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9577
PY  - 2003
Y2  - March 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9577
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9577.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Laurence M. Ball
Department of Economics
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218
Tel: 410/516-7605
Fax: 410/516-7600
E-Mail: lball@jhu.edu

Niamh Sheridan
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2003-09-01
AB  - This paper asks whether inflation targeting improves economic performance, as measured by the behavior of inflation, output, and interest rates. We compare seven OECD countries that adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s to thirteen that did not. After the early 90s, performance improved along many dimensions for both the targeting countries and the non-targeters. In some cases the targeters improved by more; for example, average inflation fell by a larger amount. However, these differences are explained by the facts that targeters performed worse than non-targeters before the early 90s, and there is regression to the mean. Once one controls for regression to the mean, there is no evidence that inflation targeting improves performance.
ER  -