With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, any pretense of a connection of the world's currencies to any real commodity has been abandoned. Yet since the 1980s, most central banks have abandoned money-growth targets as practical guidelines for monetary policy as well. How then can pure "fiat" currencies be managed so as to create confidence in the stability of national units of account. Interest and Prices seeks to provide theoretical foundations for a rule-based approach to monetary policy suitable for a world of instant communications and ever more efficient financial markets. In such a world, effective monetary policy requires that central banks construct a conscious and articulate account of what they are doing. Michael Woodford reexamines the foundations of monetary economics, and shows how interest-rate policy can be used to achieve an inflation target in the absence of either commodity backing or control of a monetary aggregate.The book further shows how the tools of modern macroeconomic theory can be used to design an optimal inflation-targeting regime--one that balances stabilization goals with the pursuit of price stability in a way that is grounded in an explicit welfare analysis, and that takes account of the "New Classical" critique of traditional policy evaluation exercises. It thus argues that rule-based policymaking need not mean adherence to a rigid framework unrelated to stabilization objectives for the sake of credibility, while at the same time showing the advantages of rule-based over purely discretionary policymaking.

随着布雷顿森林体系的崩溃，任何将世界货币与任何真正的商品联系在一起的假象都被抛弃了。然而，自20世纪80年代以来，大多数央行都放弃了货币增长目标，将其作为货币政策的实际指导方针。那么，如何管理纯粹的“法定”货币，以建立对国家记账单位稳定的信心。利率和价格寻求为一种基于规则的货币政策方法提供理论基础，这种方法适用于一个即时通讯和越来越有效的金融市场的世界。在这样一个世界里，有效的货币政策要求中央银行对他们正在做的事情建立一个有意识和清晰的账户。迈克尔·伍德福德重新审视货币经济学的基础，并说明在缺乏商品支持或货币管制的情况下，利率政策如何被用来实现通胀目标聚合。The这本书进一步展示了现代宏观经济理论的工具如何被用来设计一个最优的通货膨胀目标制度——一个平衡稳定目标和追求价格的制度以明确的福利分析为基础的稳定，并考虑到对传统政策评估活动的“新古典主义”批判。因此，它认为，基于规则的决策不一定意味着为了可信度而坚持与稳定目标无关的刚性框架，同时显示基于规则的政策制定相对于纯粹的自由裁量决策的优势。