Before our politicians accept Lars Svensson's advice, they would do well to heed the comment of a senior overseas central banker he quotes: "Of all arrangements [for deciding monetary policy] the best is the right committee.
"The worst is the wrong committee."
Professor Svensson's recommendation that the considerable power entrusted to Reserve Bank governor Don Brash be vested in a committee of five senior central bankers is not, he suggests, a big step from what happens now.
"It essentially institutionalises a well-tested internal decision-making structure the bank has already worked out," he says.
The Reserve Bank itself has been at pains lately to lift the veil from its internal processes.
It has emphasised the vigorous debate which precedes any decision on interest rates.
But in Professor Svensson's view this system relies too much on the abilities and character of the present governor.
A future governor may be less able, or more authoritarian, he says.
And one of the arguments defending the status quo - that it makes the governor solely accountable to the point of possibly being sacked - does not wash with him.
It takes so long to identify what the effects of a monetary policy judgement call are, and it is so hard to tell how much of what eventually happens is down to policy and how much to luck - good or bad - that removing a governor would never be easy nor quick, Professor Svensson says.
He regards making monetary policy as a job for experts, and rejects the case for having outside members on a monetary policy committee.
It would be difficult to find people without a conflict of interest (after all, business always wants lower interest rates), and the bank already makes as much effort as any other central bank to talk to businesses.
New Zealand's sole decision maker model is unusual. Most inflation-targeting regimes have a committee.
But the submissions to Professor Svensson on this subject were split down the middle.
The bank's independent directors were among those arguing for keeping the current system.
Michael Woodford, a monetary economist from Princeton, has argued that, when it comes to carrying out monetary policy, what a central bank signals about the future course of interest rates is at least as important as the actual adjustments of an overnight interest rate.
Although a committee can agree on the immediate question of whether to move interest rates, it is much more difficult to get agreement on the likely course of policy down the line, Professor Woodford argues.
Professor Svensson proposes that the way individual committee members vote, as well as unattributed minutes of discussions, be made public.
But Professor Woodford says that in Britain this system leads to a lot of attention being paid to differing opinions, and makes it harder to give a clear message about what the bank as a whole has decided.
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