Introduction It is a pleasure to be speaking at this year’s Conference of Economists on a subject which has been central to my own career. I thought of calling the speech “Monetary Regimes I Have Known”, but that would have given too historical an emphasis.
While history is extremely important, and provides a useful antidote to excessively abstract thinking, more is needed to satisfy the Conference theme of “policy challenges of the new century”. I have therefore attempted to respond in a forward-looking way, by drawing some conclusions about the direction in which monetary policy regimes are likely to evolve.