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Kahn’s monetary theory and the policy debate during the works of the Radcliffe Committee
carlo cristiano, Paolo Paesani

Last modified: 2016-06-11

Abstract


The appointment of a Committee on the Working of the Monetary System in 1957 (Radcliffe Committee) in the UK gave the occasion to debate innovative ideas in the field of monetary policy. Many prominent economists participated in the Committee’s works, which ended with the publication of the Radcliffe Report in 1959. Making an exception to the rule of not mentioning individual contributions, the Radcliffe Report claims to “follow Professor Kahn […] in insisting upon the structure of interest rates rather than some notion of the ‘supply of money’ as the centrepiece of monetary action”. This statement makes the investigation of Kahn’s position, as presented in a Memorandum and in his evidence in front of the Committee, particularly relevant to understand the Report policy recommendations. Plausibly, the views Kahn expressed in front of the Radcliffe Committee reflected his ideas on interest rates and monetary policy as in his 1954 study on liquidity preference. Based on this intuition and the reconstruction of the institutional background, the main goal of this paper is to investigate whether and if so to what extent the Radcliffe Report’s recommendations were indeed in line with Kahn’s ides and in particular with his sophisticated view of the role agents’ expectations play in determining long-term interest rates in connection with monetary policy decisions. Investigating this issue is interesting per se and for its connections with unconventional monetary policy today.