Pioneering price level targeting: The Swedish experience 1931-1937

In September 1931, Sweden became the first country to make the stabilizatio n of the domestic price level the official goal of its monetary policy, act ually the only country that so far has adopted such an explicit price level target. Starting from the issues and concepts familiar from research and p olicy experience of inflation targeting - as contrasted to price level targ eting - this paper examines the evolution of the Swedish price level target ing in the 1930s, We bring out a number of similarities and differences bet ween price stabilization in the 1930s and in the 1990s. (C) 1999 Elsevier S cience B.V. All rights reserved.