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"An up-to-date analysis of monetary policy, with a particular focus on the United Kingdom. The book considers questions about how it actually works in practice, and what it should do. It also considers many of the contributions made by economists, both theoretical and empirical, which shed light on monetary policy. One of the aims of the book is to impart this knowledge in an intelligible way to those with a reasonable grasp of basic economics"--

How many people should decide about monetary policy? In this paper, we take an empirical perspective on this issue, analyzing the relationship between the number of monetary policy decision-makers and monetary policy outcomes. Using a new data set that characterizes Monetary Policy Committees (MPCs) in more than 30 countries from 1960 through 2000, we find a U-shaped relation between the membership size of MPCs and inflation; our results suggest that the lowest level of inflation is reached at MPCs with about seven to ten members. Similar results are obtained for other measures, such as inflation variability and output growth. We also find that MPC size influences the success of monetary targeting regimes. In contrast, there is no evidence that either turnover rates of MPC members or the membership composition of MPCs affect economic outcomes.

Since the early 1990s, the IMF has been advising countries to shift to the use of indirect instruments for executing monetary policy. This paper provides information about a monetary policy instruments database, maintained by the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF. We offer an overview of the information contained in the database in the form of comparative summary tables and graphs to illustrate the use of monetary policy instruments by groups of countries (developing, emerging market and developed countries). The main trend that can be identified from the database information