Let us take a very simplified representation of monetary policy-making: a Taylor rule. How would this “high priority” be included in this Taylor-inspired interest-rate-setting process? Would it be an additional objective to be traded off, on a par with inflation and demand conditions, i.e. an additional reaction variable weighted by its own coefficient?
Or should it be expressed as a constraint, a knock-out clause, which could become binding only occasionally? And, in the latter case, who should decide when this rebalancing or inversion of policy priorities – from time to time overriding the Taylor prescriptions – should be pursued? The second issue is one of policy legitimacy.