Monetary Policy: Rules, Targets, and Shocks
讨论货币政策的核心争议，包括中央银行在应对经济衰退中的作用、货币主义目标的兴衰，以及可能的替代框架，如盯住货币基础、名义GNP或价格指数。
The proper conduct of monetary policy is now once again wide open to discussion. An immediate practical controversy concerns the role of central banks in recovery from the world depression. Underlying that debate are some unresolved fundamental issues regarding the responsibilities, goals, targets, and operating procedures of central banks. Monetarism won the hearts and minds of many economists and most central bankers in the 1970s. Now it seems to be losing adherents and influence partly because it is blamed for the severe depression, partly because regulatory, institutional, and technological changes have altered the meanings and velocities of monetary aggregates. Last summer Chairman Volcker and his Federal Reserve colleagues suspended their monetarist targets, to almost universal relief. The severity of the recession, the international debt crisis, and the pace of change in financial structure were all good reasons. It is doubtful, though possible, that money stock targets will regain their previous status. If not, what philosophy of monetary control, what framework for the conduct of policy, will replace them? A host of monetary architects are ready to fill the vacuum. Some would restore the gold standard or make paper money convertible into other commodities. Some would replace intermediate monetary aggregates with other targets: the monetary base, nominal GNP or final sales, total domestic credit, price indexes or their rates of change, exchange rates. Some advocate irrevocable commitment to announced