The Global Policy Rate Map: construction, coverage and limits of a 39-jurisdiction policy-rate snapshot

This paper documents release 1.0 of the Global Policy Rate Map, a cross-jurisdiction snapshot of monetary policy settings covering 39 economies across four regions. Each row records the operational policy rate an authority actually sets, the most recent change in that rate, the distance from the peak of the current cycle, and limited contextual fields on inflation, public debt and output. Across the 39 jurisdictions the median policy rate is 4.25 percent, the median real policy rate is 1.19 percent, and 24 economies had cut at their most recent decision against 15 that had raised. The paper sets out how each field is constructed, why the real rate is a crude subtraction that fails mechanically under high inflation, and seven limits that constrain what the file can support.