Real-world central banks have a strong aversion to policy reversals. Nevertheless, theoretical models of monetary policy within the dynamic general equilibrium framework normally ignore the irreversibility of interest rate control. In this paper, we develop a formal model that incorporates a central bank’s discretionary optimization problem with an aversion to policy reversals. We show that, even under a discretionary regime, the optimal timing of liftoff from the zero lower bound is characterized by its history dependence, which arises from the option value to waiting, and there exists an optimal degree of policy irreversibility at which the social loss is minimized.

现实世界的中央银行强烈反对政策逆转。然而，在动态一般均衡框架内的货币政策理论模型通常忽略了利率控制的不可逆性。在本文中，我们开发了一个正式模型，该模型包含了央行的自由裁量优化问题以及对政策逆转的厌恶。我们表明，即使在自由裁量制下，从零下限提起的最优时机也具有其历史依赖性，这是从期权价值到等待产生的，并且存在着政策不可逆性的最佳程度，在这种情况下，社会损失是最大的。被最小化。