John H. Wood is R. J. Reynolds Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has also taught at the Universities of Birmingham, Pennsylvania, and Singapore and at Northwestern University. A Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a Visiting Fellow of the American Institute for Economic Research, Professor Wood has also been a full-time or visiting economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia. His earlier studies of central banking include in 1967 the first application of the theory of economic policy to Federal Reserve behavior.

• 1. Understanding monetary policy; 2. An introduction to central bankers; 3. Making a central bank: I. Surviving; 4. Making a central bank: II. Looking for a rule; 5. Making a central bank: III. Ends and means; 6. Central banking in the United States, 1790–1914; 7. Before the crash: the origins and early years of the Federal Reserve; 8. The fall and rise of the Federal Reserve, 1929–51; 9. Central banking in the United States after the Great Depression, 1951–71; 10. The Bank of England after 1914; 11. Rules vs. authorities; 12. Permanent suspension; 13. Back to the beginning? New contracts for new companies.

'The forces and personalities shaping the development of central banking are carefully detailed in this excellent and readable book on central banking in the United States and Great Britain.' Lee Hoskins, Former President, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland