Economy of Words: Communicative Imperatives in Central Banks. Douglas R. Holmes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Abstract

Douglas Holmes traces how inflation targeting, a traditional analytical focus of central banker's regulatory interventions, was enlisted in what he terms "communicative experiments" (p. 1) on the part of central banks, based on more than a decade-long ethnographic engagement with central bankers at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Sveriges Riksbank in Sweden, the Bank of England in the United Kingdom, the Federal Reserve System in the United States, and at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. These experiments, taking the form of public statements, meeting minutes, and speeches, engendered a novel monetary regime which Holmes-adopting the terminology of Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England-terms "public currency" (p. 19). Holmes argues that the novelty of this monetary regime rests on the premise that "the public broadly must be recruited to collaborate with central banks in achieving the ends of monetary policy, namely, 'stable prices and confidence in the currency'" (p. 1).