Fifty Years of Monetary Policy: What Have We Learned?

Over the past 50 years, views about the role and conduct of monetary policy have evolved considerably. The development of economic ideas, the changing state of the world, and experience – at times favourable, but for a significant portion of the period under review, unfavourable – have combined to change the environment in which central banks operate. In the process, a number of basic principles for good monetary policy seem to have been reasonably settled, but one or two remain very much debated.