Since the 1990s there have been a number of major changes in the design and conduct of monetary policy. In a globalized environment, there is less time to adjust to shocks and greater need to achieve closer convergence of economic performance among trading partners. As a result, a number of...

The author surveys some problems in measuring inflation and examines the likely costs of anticipated and unanticipated inflation as well as the short-run costs of reducing inflation. He looks at the possibility that an inflationary bias may be implicit in the political economy aspects of the...

The institutional environments in which central banks operate have become more alike over the past decade. The author examines the monetary policy operating procedures of the Federal Reserve and central banks in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Switzerland. In particular, he...