Inflation Targeting Does Not Matter: Another Look at OECD Sacrifice Ratios

Abstract

Recently in this journal, Gonc ̧alves and Carvalho (2009) concluded thatinflation targeters were able to bring inflation down at less cost than non-targeters (p. 242). This comment shows that their conclusion is not robustbut instead is the result of comparing a particular subset of inflation tar-geting (IT) disinflations with nonsimultaneous disinflations that occurredunder very different macroeconomic conditions. In their sample, simple ex-tensions such as justifiably varying the treatment group of IT disinflations,to control for common time-varying effects or to control for the MaastrichtTreaty effects, suggest that IT does not matter