Not logged in.

Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title A pioneer of a new monetary policy? Sweden's price level targeting of the 1930s revisited
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Tobias Straumann
  • Ulrich Woitek
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
Number No. 386
ISSN 1424-0459
Date 2008
Abstract Text The paper re-examines Sweden’s price level targeting during the 1930s which is regarded as a precursor of today’s inflation targeting. According to conventional wisdom the Riksbank was the first central bank to adopt price level targeting as the guideline for its activities, although in practice giving priority to exchange rate stabilisation over price level stabilisation. On the basis of econometric analysis (Bayesian VAR) and the evaluation of new archival sources we come to a more skeptical conclusion. Our results suggest that it is hard to reconcile the Riksbank’s striving for a fixed exchange rate with the claim that it adopted price level targeting. This finding has implications for the prevailing view of the 1930s as a decade of great policy innovations.
Official URL http://www.econ.uzh.ch/wp.html
PDF File Download from ZORA
Export BibTeX
EP3 XML (ZORA)