“Below, but close to”: the pragmatic origins of incomplete Central Banks’ targets
(2022) 38th EGOS Colloquium - Organizing: The Beauty of Imperfection — Location: Vienna (hybrid format) (7.July.2022)
Files
Belowbutcloseto_DUTERME.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 345.79 KB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- Despite the recommendations of many economists, most Central Banks have not decided to define their inflation target with a univocal number, preferring to maintain some ambiguity via a rate range or a comparative formulation (such as “below, but close to”). This article accounts for this puzzling fact from two angles. First, four possible explanations are drawn from the social science literature on Central Banks. Second, through a historical analysis of the Belgian Central Bank, we test these four explanations and propose a fifth one, inspired by the pragmatist trend in organization studies. According to this last hypothesis, the inflation target constitutes a device whose vagueness allows for an intra- and inter-organizational compromise.
- Affiliations
Citations
Duterme, T. (2022). “Below, but close to”: the pragmatic origins of incomplete Central Banks’ targets. 38th EGOS Colloquium - Organizing: The Beauty of Imperfection, Vienna (hybrid format). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/269254