The Making of Monetary Policy in the UK, 1975-2000

Over the quarter of a century with which this book is concerned, the UK has had an extraordinarily diverse experience of monetary policy and monetary regimes. Monetary policy has been transformed, from attempts to control broad money from the supply side with the use of indirect controls on banks' lending, to an almost exclusive focus on interest rates in a context of inflation targeting. The exchange rate has at times been fixed, at other times almost perfectly flexible, and at other times again more or less managed. Meanwhile the real economy has experienced large variations in growth, together with what most observers have seen as a sharp rise and then a gradual declin…