Central banks that adopt an explicit inflation-targeting regime typically commit to steering a policy interest rate so as to keep a measured inflation rate near a preannounced numerical goal, usually over a multi-year horizon. Proponents argue that the chief virtue of the regime lies not in the target itself but in the transparency and accountability it forces on the institution: because the target is public and the central bank must explain any sustained deviation from it, market participants can form more accurate expectations of future monetary policy, which in turn dampens the very volatility the regime aims to prevent. Critics, however, note a structural asymmetry in how such transparency operates in practice. When inflation runs above target, central banks face intense public pressure to tighten policy quickly, since above-target inflation is immediately visible in everyday prices. When inflation runs persistently below target, by contrast, the costs are diffuse and delayed—foregone employment, muted wage growth—and rarely generate comparable political urgency, so central banks tend to tolerate below-target shortfalls for longer than symmetric equivalent overshoots. The critics conclude that inflation targeting, whatever its stated symmetry, has functioned asymmetrically in practice, with the target behaving more like a ceiling than a genuine two-sided goal.