The report started collecting evidence in 1957 and was the result of dissatisfaction with the workings of monetary policy in the 1950s.
Monetary theory made progress after the interwar period but was disrupted by the Second World War.
After the war, the context was adequate[clarification needed] to start rethinking how to run monetary policy, and so the Radcliffe Committee was set up.
The 339-page report reviewed British monetary policy since 1931 and gave recommendations.
The economist Anna Schwartz, 10 years after the publication of the report, wrote that research in the following years gave "no support to the views expressed in the Radcliffe Report".