Simple Monetary Policymaking without the Output Gap

Several research contributions have argued that information about the output gap is essential for a good monetary policy rule. However, as pointed out by Orphanides (2001), there is considerable real-time uncertainty about the size of the output gap. The paper argues that simple monetary policy rules that rely exclusively on (survey-based) information about future and past inflation rates may be more efficient than optimized Taylor rules once real-time output gap uncertainty is accounted for. Even when only information about historical inflation rates is available, a very simple policy rule may be constructed that improves on the Taylor rule.