Although it was mostly unspoken, there was a growing sense at the time that a simple, systematic framework for central bank practice was needed to ensure that the hard-won gains from breaking the back of inflation were not given away by short-sighted, discretionary monetary experiments that were poorly executed, such as had been the case in the 1970s.
Policy Rate Rules That vacuum, of course, was filled by John Taylor in his classic 1993 paper, “Discretion vs. Policy Rules in Practice.” Again, for this audience, I will not need to remind you of the enormous impact this single paper had not only on the field of  ultimate objectives for the output gap and inflation figured as criteria for policy decisions.