Innovation in monetary policy: Challenge and response

This paper presents some relatively non-technical thoughts on the changing rôle of money under the pressure of declining transactions costs and the innovations in monetary policy-making it induces or requires. In the first part, recent British experience is interpreted as a serious warning about the special rôle of money among financial assets under present-day circumstances and the high cost of disregarding it. While this may please the ‘monetarists’, the remainder of the paper argues, as a counterpoint, that this may not remain so forever. In particular, as argued in the second part, the evolution of the Eurodollar market suggests that the rôle of bank money and the significance of the money multiplier are declining. The third part visualizes the outlines of an economy in which the decline in transactions costs has made money stocks generally obsolete.