The Great Inflation: The Rebirth of Modern Central Banking

Controlling inflation is among the most important objectives of economic policy. By maintaining price stability, policymakers are able to reduce uncertainty, improve price-monitoring mechanisms, and facilitate more efficient planning and allocation of resources, thereby raising productivity.
This volume focuses on understanding the causes of the Great Inflation of the 1970s and 1980s. This was a period of rising inflation in many nations, when interest rates reached double digits. The immediate cause of the period’s rise in inflation is the subject of considerable debate, and there is considerable attention to the role of monetary policy. In this volume, contributors map monetary policy from the 1960s to the present, shedding light on lessons of the Great Inflation for today’s global and increasingly complex economic environment.