MONETARY POLICY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

The central banks carrying out monetary policy have already faced numerous extraordinary challenges in the Twenty-first century. As it is with many issues in the economy, most of these challenges are interconnected. Having to deal with the financial crises of 2007-2009, euro area sovereign debt crises, or low inflation or even deflation pressures, the central banks had to adopt certain Unconventional monetary policy tools. In this paper, after presenting a brief overview of some the recent monetary policy actions taken by the central banks, the author ponders over the following questions: What is going to happen after the inflation target is reached? Will the central banks return to using the conventional tools only? What may be the other challenges of monetary policy in the Twenty-first century? The authors come to conclusion that the monetary policy is not going to return to the one prior to 2008. The future monetary policy will be strongly influenced by the macroprudential policy and new central bank issued "digital currency".