Chart 1 illustrates the importance of alternative long-run inflation objectives for monetary policy in the FRB/US model. As shown, with an inflation objective of 4 percent per year, as measured by the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index, the funds rate reaches the zero bound less than 1 percent of the time (bold line, left axis). In other words, the federal funds rate would be expected to fall to zero less than once every 100 quarters or, equivalently, less than four times every 100 years. And when it did hit the zero bound, the funds rate would be expected to remain at 0 percent on average for only two consecutive quarters (dashed line, right axis). As the inflation objective is lowered and the funds rate is on average closer to zero, however, policy is increasingly more constrained. For a zero-inflation objective, in fact,
the funds rate would be expected to hit the zero bound 14 percent of the time (bold line, left axis) and stay there for six consecutive quarters (dashed line, right axis).