Counterfactual Inflation Targeting in Nepal

The Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) pegs the Nepalese rupee to the Indian rupee, meaning that the NRB effectively transfers control over the country’s monetary policy to India. It is therefore argued that Indian inflation causes Nepalese inflation. This study investigates whether the NRB should have instead floated the Nepalese rupee and targeted inflation. For this purpose, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model under a fixed exchange rate regime is estimated using Nepalese data during the 1993–2016 period. The estimated model is used for simulations under counterfactual scenarios for which the NRB floated the Nepalese rupee and followed a rule to target inflation during the study period. Findings show that inflation targeting would have significantly increased the welfare cost associated with business cycles to risk-averse household, owing to interest-rate volatility. The volatilities of consumption and labour services would have become larger. JEL Classification: E31, E32, E52, F41, F45