Effectiveness and commitment to inflation targeting policy: Evidence from Indonesia and Thailand

The chief objective of our paper is to highlight basic features of the Information Technology (IT) policies adopted by Indonesia and Thailand, and to evaluate the commitment of the monetary authorities and the overall performances of the IT regime. The results demonstrate that the IT regime in these two economies has had some success, but not during the immediate aftermath of the Lehman Brothers' collapse in the last quarter of 2008. Furthermore, the implementation IT policy in these economies has largely been "flexible'' during the stable period, seeking the balance between narrowing the output gap, managing exchange rate volatility, and anchoring inflationary pressure. However during the turbulent period, there had been a heightened focus on anchoring inflationary expectations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.