The history of central banking has shown that old lessons keep re-emerging, according to a paper by Glenn Stevens, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, and economists Adam Cagliarini and Christopher Kent.

In a paper presented on Tuesday at the central bank's 50th anniversary symposium, Stevens, Cagliarini and Kent document the evolution of monetary policy over the past half-century. They note that the failure of Bretton Woods and the experience of the 1970s, when macroeconomic growth