The Conduct of Monetary Policy Without Monetary Aggregates

A central dilemma for the monetary authorities is how to determine monetary policy. The increasing unreliability of monetary aggregates has led over the past few years to less concern for monetary targeting, both in the UK and elsewhere, and a greater influence for the exchange rate on monetary policy. But in the UK, most recently, there has been a move away from setting monetary policy in relation to the exchange rate and external considerations in favour of setting monetary policy in relation to domestic demand. Not surprisingly, this shift has occurred at a time of rising concern about domestic overheating. It illustrates the dilemma of whether monetary policy should be driven by domestic demand considerations or by external, exchange rate considerations. This dilemma is not just confined to the UK for it is a real source of conflict underlying the Louvre Accord and its successors that seek to determine G7 exchange rates in a cooperative manner. In what follows, we argue that exchange rate developments should have an appreciable influence on monetary policy, since this is helpful in attaining stable inflation. But we also suggest that this influence should not go too far, since this stability of inflation may be at the expense of stability of domestic demand and output. Targeting of exchange rates within narrow bands is unlikely to be desirable, unless fiscal policy can be used more flexibly to stabilize domestic demand. This suggests that, in the period up to the spring, the use of monetary policy to hold the £/JDM exchange rate within narrow limits may have been overdone. More seriously, international exchange rate agreements among the G7 countries are likely to founder under adverse market pressures, unless current imbalances in fiscal policy are adjusted. In the absence of greater flexibility in fiscal policy, policy makers will have to trade off domestic and exchange rate considerations in determining monetary policy. An important outstanding issue that needs further consideration is what indicators should be used for monetary policy, in a world in which monetary aggregates provide unreliable signals.