While the causes of the collapse of cooperation in maintaining the international gold standard are subject to debate (the lack of a dominant central bank to coordinate global monetary policy versus the nonreflection of disparate inflation rates in exchange rate parities, for example), there is...

This paper examines the impact of several different factors on the credibility of the Federal Reserve's monetary targets. Two factors appear to explain why the targets became less credible during the 1980s. First, the Fed's shift from M1 to M2 targets reduced credibility because the latter...