Making a Modern Central Bank The Bank of England 1979–2003 Studies in Macroeconomic History Series

Making a Modern Central Bank examines a revolution in monetary and economic policy. This authoritative guide explores how the Bank of England shifted its traditional mechanisms to accommodate a newly internationalized financial and economic system. The Bank's transformation into a modern inflation-targeting independent central bank allowed it to focus on a precisely defined task of monetary management, ensuring price stability. The reframing of the task of central banks, however, left them increasingly vulnerable to financial crisis. James vividly outlines and discusses significant historical developments in UK monetary policy, and his knowledge of modern European history adds rich context to archival research on the Bank of England's internal documents. A worthy continuation of the previous official histories of the Bank of England, this book also reckons with contemporary issues, shedding light on the origins of growing backlash against globalization and the European Union.

1. Introductory; 2. Foreign Fetters; 3. The Performance of the UK Economy; 4. The Inexplicable in Pursuit of the Uncontrollable: Monetary Strategy; 5. “A Good Deal of Bad Advice”: The Battle over Policy Control; 6. The Long Shadow of the Deutschemark: The Exchange Rate Alternative; 7. Hong Kong: Bank Crises and Currency Crises; 8. Shaved Eyebrows: Banking and Financial Supervision; 9. Tunneling Deep: The Bank and the Management of British Industry; 10. Great Leap in the Dark: The Bank, the Delors Committee and the Euro; 11. The Spine Theory and its Collapse: The ERM and the 1990s Recession; 12. “You can't be in and out at the same time:” The Legacy of Delors; 13. Horses for Courses: The Drive for Independence; 14. Failure of Internal Communication: The Development of Banking Supervision in the 1990s; 15. The New Bank: A University of Threadneedle Street?; 16. Epilogue; Appendix 1. Biographies; Appendix 2. The History of Monetary Aggregates

Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs and Claude and Lore Kelly Professor of European Studies at Princeton University.