An Assessment of Monetary Policy Credibility in Iran

The key element in influencing monetary policy is the credibility of the policy, that is, the belief of economic agents in the ability and implementation of it. The existence of a credible central bank will lower inflation rate at a lower cost and makes it easier to keep inflation at a low and stable level. The reaction of inflation expectations to monetary policy changes is the most important source for assessing the credibility of the central bank and the monetary policy situation, which has been emphasized in credibility assessments in the last decade. This study estimates implicit inflationary expectations based on seasonal data of Iran for the period from 1380 to 1394 by the new Keynesian Phillips curve. By using Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag model the response of the implicit inflation expectations to monetary policy variables (the nominal interest rate change and the change in the growth rate of money stock) was measured to assess the credibility of monetary policy and the central bank. The results show that the inflation expectations in the studied period were not significantly affected by monetary policy variables in the short term and in the long run. This means that the declared monetary policy was not considered credible by the economic agents.