Introduction

During the course of the last fifteen years (1968–83) I have had the privilege of acting as a specialist adviser in monetary economics at the Bank of England. All the papers now republished in this collection were written during this period. Although some of them could, in principle, have been written by a monetary economist without close contact with the monetary authorities, the contents of all of them have been informed and influenced by my work in the Bank; and several of the papers arose directly and immediately from that work. As I shall explain at some greater length later, however, the papers represent my own views, and are my own responsibility, and should not be treated as a reflection of the views, or position, of the Bank as a whole. Nevertheless I am extremely grateful to the Bank for having allowed me to prepare them initially, and to republish them now.