Backward-lookingness

In a sense, forward-looking monetary policy is acting, in a second-best fashion, to counter a backward-looking externality elsewhere in the economy. It is interesting to explore this notion further by considering the trade-off between the degree of backward-lookingness on the part of the private sector in the course of their wage bargaining and the degree of forward-lookingness on the part of the central bank in the course of its interest rate setting.