Inflation targeting did make a difference in industrial countries’ inflation and output growth

Abstract

I reevaluate the treatment effect of inflation targeting (IT) in industrial economies that adopted this regime in the early 1990s through dynamic panel regressions to show that IT had significant enhancing effects on realized inflation and GDP growth. I also refine the propensity score matching of Lin and Ye [2007. Does inflation targeting really make a difference? Evaluating the treatment effect of inflation targeting in seven industrial countries. Journal of Monetary Economics 54(8), 2521-2533] and Ball and Sheridan’s [2005. Does inflation targeting matter? In: Bernanke B, Woodford M (Eds), The inflation targeting debate, 249-276] cross-section regressions to show that their conclusion of IT irrelevance can be overturned. By analyzing other samples that extend theirs, I provide further evidence of the pioneering IT systems good performance among developed countries.