Abstract:
We examine how a more hawkish policy stance – defined as an abovemedian long-run inflation semi-elasticity of the policy rate – affects economic growth in 37 inflation-targeting countries. To this end, we estimate
time-varying, bias-corrected forward-looking Taylor rules for all inflationtargeting countries for which the data permit such estimation. Our results
point to sizable growth effects, exceeding 0.5 percent annually, for countries with a more hawkish policy stance. This suggests that the growth
benefits reported in the previous literature on inflation targeting are primarily driven by a small subset of countries that react more forcefully to
inflation.
