This volume collects the proceedings from a conference on the evolution and practice of central banking sponsored by the Central Bank Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The articles and discussants' comments in this volume largely focus on two questions: the need for central banks, and how to maintain price stability once they are established. The questions addressed include whether large banks (or coalitions of small banks) can substitute for government regulation and due central bank liquidity provision; whether the future will have fewer central banks or more; the possibility of private means to deliver a uniform currency; if competition across sovereign currencies can ensure global price stability; the role of learning (and unlearning) the lessons of the past inflationary episodes in understanding central bank behavior; and an analysis of the European Central Bank.

All central banks manage the supply of money and credit in their countries, increasing and decreasing them as needed to provide what economies need to keep growing. The way central banks typically handle that job involves short-term interest rates. But when inflation is low, central banks can t use their usual methods to get money and credit into an economy that needs it. Several essays in this volume describe the work of economists who have investigated problems that central banks might have when inflation gets low. Other essays investigate related questions such as whether an economy suffers when it moves from high inflation to low inflation, what the costs of inflation are to economic welfare, and whether a little bit of inflation can actually be good for economic growth.

The contributions in this volume reveal much about the institutional nature of central banks. They analyze the banks' growth and development as well as desired objectives and challenges in the future. The articles tackle the issues in a variety of ways, combining historical observation with economic theory and experimentation.

All central banks manage the supply of money and credit in their countries, increasing and decreasing them as needed to provide what economies need to keep growing. The way central banks typically handle that job involves short-term interest rates. But when inflation is low, central banks can't use their usual methods to get money and credit into an economy that needs it. Several essays in this volume describe the work of economists who have investigated problems that central banks might have when inflation gets low. Other essays investigate related questions such as whether an economy suffers when it moves from high inflation to low inflation, what the costs of inflation are to economic welfare, and whether a little bit of inflation can actually be good for economic growth.