Discussion Paper
A Monetary Policy: Recent Theory and Practice
The paper reviews the major developments of the last three decades: the rise and fall of monetarism as theory and as targeting of intermediate monetary aggregates; targeting of nominal GDP in order to escape volatility of velocity of money; the abandonment of intermediate targets as superfluous; the use of money-market interest rates as operating procedure, except in the U.S.; their replacement by reserve aggregates in 1970–82; inflation stability and price level stability as policy objectives, often exclusive of other macroeconomic goals; the U.S.