34 There are no comparable institutions in Norway – there is only one central bank. The benchmark must be international best practice. The evaluations are generally performed by international central banking experts or economists at other central banks. 30  See for example Bruce Chapman (2003): “Rational Choice and Categorical Reason”, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 151(3), 1169–1210 and Philip Pettit (2001): “Deliberative Democracy and the Discursive Dilemma”, Philosophical Issues (supplement to Noûs) 11, 268–99. 31  See the discussion in Carl Andreas Claussen and Øistein Røisland (2010): “The discursive dilemma in monetary policy”, Norges Bank Working Paper 2010/5. It should be noted that premise-based decisions can be vulnerable to strategic behaviour. It is possible to vote on the premises in such a way as to reach a preferred outcome. 32  The material on which interest rate decisions is based is published on the Norges Bank website. For a more detailed discussion, see “On transparency” in Norges Bank Occasional Paper No. 41 (2010). 33  Reports from Norges Bank Watch are available at: http://www.bi.no/en/Research/Research-Centres/Centrefor-Monetary-Economics-CME/Norges-Bank-Watch/  34  See inter alia David Longworth and Asbjørn Rødseth (2003):“Report on the Decision-Making Process and the Strategy Document”, Hans Genberg, Charles Wyplosz and Andrea Fracasso (2003):“How do central banks write? An Evaluation of Inflation Targeting Central Banks” and Ingimundur Fridriksson (forthcoming): “The Monetary Policy Report Process in Norges Bank”. 8  BIS Review 147/2010  7. Was the decision good?
Even if our delegating authority and critics have access to the background for our decisions and the way we arrive at them, one big question still remains: what should the criteria be for judging whether our decisions are good? The objective of monetary policy is a natural place to begin our assessment. Have we or have we not achieved price stability? Even if we make our best efforts, there is no guarantee that we will succeed in reaching this objective. The key policy rate is not the only factor affecting the economy and that can disturb the outcome. Even so, we can give weight to accurate information, assess the most relevant alternatives and listen to input. Making a decision on this basis might excuse us from blame if the outcome should in retrospect turn out to be unfavourable. 35 Let us return to the decision in 1949 to follow the pound sterling. As I said, in retrospect the consequences of this decision appear to be less favourable. Nor, perhaps, was the decisionmaking process sufficiently thorough. Doubts have been raised as to whether alternative courses of action were adequately assessed. 36 But the authorities apparently felt that they had no choice other than a comparable devaluation of the krone. 37 Norway’s competitiveness could have been weakened substantially if they had not followed the British move. In view of this, it can therefore be argued that their motives for doing what they did were good ones. The 1949 decision also illustrates the problem of counterfactual analyses.