Empirical literature provided convincing evidence that explicit (i.e., legislated) inflation targets anchor expectations. I propose a novel game theoretic framework with generalized timing that allows us to formally capture this beneficial anchoring effect. Using the framework I identify several factors that influence whether and how strongly expectations are anchored, namely (i) the public's cost of decision making, (ii) the public's inflation aversion, (iii) the slope of the Phillips curve, (iv) the magnitude of supply shocks, (v) the degree of central bank conservatism, and under many (but not all) circumstances, (vi) the explicitness of the inflation target.

The consequences of the adoption of quality standards on the endogenous timing of moves are investigated in a vertically differentiated duopoly. We obtain two main results. First, we prove that, when the low-quality firm is Stackelberg leader in the quality stage, the related MQS is ineffective. Second, the timing game in the quality space has a unique equilibrium in pure strategies, involving simultaneous moves. The related optimal MQS is time consistent, although suboptimal from the viewpoint of the regulator.