Existing empirical evidence on the effect of inflation-targeting on inflation volatility is, at best, mixed. However, comparing inflation volatility across alternative monetary policy regimes, i.e., pre- and post-inflation-targeting, begs the question. The question is not whether the volatility of inflation has changed, but instead whether the volatility is different than it otherwise would have been. Given this, our paper uses the cosine-squared cepstrum to provide overwhelming international evidence that inflation targeting has indeed reduced inflation volatility in 22 out of the 24 countries considered in our sample of established inflation-targeters, than it would have been the case if the central banks in these countries did not decide to set a target for inflation.

关于通胀目标制对通胀波动的影响的现有经验证据充其量是混合的。然而，比较不同货币政策体系的通胀波动性，即通胀前目标和通胀后目标，回避了这个问题。问题不在于通胀的波动性是否发生了变化，而是波动性是否与本来应该有的不同。鉴于此，我们的论文使用余弦平方倒谱提供了压倒性的国际证据，证明在我们的既定通胀目标样本中所考虑的 24 个国家中的 22 个国家，通胀目标确实降低了通胀波动，如果这些国家的中央银行并未决定设定通货膨胀目标。