Current Policy

For most African countries, malaria has become an overwhelming public health problem, leading some governments to consider using DDT for malaria control in the midst of a heightened debate about its advantages and disadvantages. This report seeks to document the nature of the DDT debate in East and Southern Africa by describing current DDT policy plus malaria and insecticide control specialists’ views on alternatives to DDT use, examining the factors that influence malaria control policy formation and assessing specialists’ knowledge about the human health impacts of DDT. To obtain this information, malaria and insecticide control specialists were interviewed in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa and malaria control policy documents from each country were reviewed. Results indicate that DDT use for indoor residual spraying (IRS) continues to be viewed as a viable malaria control option, although most specialists are receptive to alternative control measures. Additionally, decentralization has had a profound impact on malaria control in East Africa and the POPs Treaty is used simultaneously as a rationale for a reintroduction of DDT and its continued prohibition in public health. Finally, research necessary to make informed decisions on malaria control policy is lacking in East Africa, and there is a need to educate malaria and insecticide control specialists on the human health impacts of insecticides used for vector control, including DDT.

This paper reviews the performance of the UK's flexible inflation targeting framework against the internationally-accepted monetary policy objective of price stability, a pre-requisite to longer-term growth and macroeconomic stability. Chapters cover the historical and international context, monetary policy frameworks and monetary policy instruments. The paper gives the Monetary Policy Committee's revised remit at Budget 2013. The Government has retained a flexible inflation target framework. The inflation target of 2 per cent, as measured by the 12-month increase in the Consumer Prices Index, is re-affirmed. The remit has been updated to clarify the trade-offs that are involved in setting monetary policy to meet a forward-looking inflation target, and in forming and communicating its judgements the MPC should promote understanding of these trade-offs. The remit continues to require an exchange of open letters between the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer if inflation moves away from the target by more than 1 percentage point in either direction. The open letter from the Governor should now be sent alongside the minutes of the MPC meeting that followed the publication of the CPI data. The remit requests that the MPC provides in its August 2013 inflation report an assessment of the merits of using intermediate thresholds - policy commitments conditional on future economic developments. The remit also reflects the Government's intention that the frameworks for monetary policy and macro-prudential policy, operated by the MPC and FPC of the Bank of England respectively, should be coordinated.

A retrospective on the Federal Reserve, these essays by leading historians and economists investigate how financial infrastructure shapes economic outcomes.