The Benefits of Interest Rate Targeting: A Partial and a General Equilibrium Analysis
重新审视Poole的经典问题，论证利率目标化无论经济面临何种冲击都具有优势，即使为维持利率稳定需使货币增长顺周期、增加产出波动，但恒定利率作为对劳动的稳定税收优于可变税收，且一般均衡分析表明利率目标能消除投资组合调整缓慢造成的扭曲。
This article revisits Poole's original question. It argues that there are clear benefits to interest rate targeting, independent of what types of shocks hit the economy. Furthermore, these benefits arise even though money growth must be procyclical in order to keep interest rates constant, which increases the variability of output. The reason a constant interest rate will be optimal is that interest rates act like a tax on labor, and constant taxes are preferable to variable taxes. This is true whether the alternative to an interest rate target is a constant money growth rule or some general money growth specification. However, this paper places special emphasis on analyzing Poole's original question --- the optimality of money growth versus interest rate rules. We use both a partial equilibrium model and a monetary general equilibrium model with sluggish portfolio adjustments to analyze the benefits of interest rate targets. The general equilibrium analysis shows that an interest rate target will undo the distortion caused by sluggish portfolios. This occurs because, to keep interest rates constant, the monetary authority will supply the reserves that would have been supplied by households in a frictionless environment. Even if private savings cannot respond to current economic conditions, an interest rate target will enable output and employment to respond to them efficiently. Which rule will a benevolent central banker prefer --- a constant money growth rate or an interest rate peg? Unlike Poole's analysis, which suggests that the optimality of an interest rate rule depends on the source of the shock affecting the economy, this paper concludes that an interest rate peg 3 will be the benevolent central banker's choice, whatever one's view about the types of shocks m...