Using Futures Prices to Control Inflation: Reply to Garrison and White
回应加里森和怀特对价格指数期货方案实现价格稳定目标的质疑，阐述央行通过盯住期货价格并依赖私人套利来稳定预期价格水平的机制。
In a recent paper, Garrison and White (G-W, 1997) offered a thoughtful and skeptical assessment of several recent proposals to use price-index futures contracts to achieve price-level targets. Their main focus is a scheme put forward by Sumner (1995), but they also addressed a scheme that I suggested (Dowd 1994, 1995) and made substantial criticisms of price-index futures schemes in general. Sumner (1997) has already replied to those that pertain to his scheme, and this reply responds to those that pertain to mine.1 The objective of my scheme is to achieve price stability whilst also making the monetary system fully automatic (and so doing away with discretionary monetary policy). This objective would be achieved by the central bank pegging the price of price-index futures contracts, and then relying on private-sector arbitrage to ensure that the money supply is consistent with a stable expected price level. The actual price level would then be equal to this expected price level plus or minus a (hopefully, small) random error.