BPEA and Monetary Policy over Fifty Years

Ever since its first issue in 1970, BPEA has played a leading role in the analysis of monetary policy. This paper surveys BPEA’s many contributions to three specific areas: (1) the Phillips curve, which provides the empirical bridge between real economic activity and inflation; (2) the analysis and demise of monetarism, the doctrine that emphasized the money supply over interest rates; and (3) evaluations of and recommendations for actual monetary policy in the United States, which began in the first BPEA issue and continues to this day. BPEA has played a dominant (though not monopoly) role in each of these areas.