In a standard New Keynesian model, a myopic central bank concerned with stabilizing inflation and changes in the output gap will implement a policy under discretion that replicates the optimal, timeless perspective, precommitment policy. By stabilizing output gap changes, the central bank...

Since central banks have limited information concerning the transmission channel of monetary policy, they are faced with the difficult task of simultaneously controlling the policy target and estimating the impact of policy actions. A tradeoff between estimation and control arises because policy...

This short paper use the perspective of the assignment problem to examine the evolution of the workings of monetary policy and the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England over its first 25 years. It outlines how the Bank, and the MPC, came across additional possible objectives and...