In my view, aiming for a higher inflation rate would lead to the same problem as making nonstandard tools a standard part of the toolbox. Such proposals tend to underestimate the associated costs. There is evidence that changing the objective would be too blunt a move. Hitting the effective lower bound is costly, but so is higher inflation.
Research shows that the key benefit of higher inflation – fewer and less severe zero lower bound events – is easily offset by the costs of positive trend inflation. What are these costs?