Economists are increasingly willing to support a change to the mandate of the Bank of England, according to a poll by the Financial Times newspaper.

Among those that replied to the survey, half of the 10 former monetary policy committee members answering said the Treasury should change the 2% annual inflation target.

However, there was little consensus among the commentators on what should replace it.

Incoming Governor Mark Carney has signalled that he could be willing to change the 15-year-old regime.

One option on the table may be targeting nominal gross domestic product (NGDP) instead of the rate of price rises.

NGDP is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced in an economy each year, without adjusting for inflation.

Carney has argued that adopting such a target would allow a country to throw anything it wanted at the economy until such time as total economic growth returned to a certain rate.

Another measure mooted is increased clarity on what circumstances would merit a change in interest rates, something that the US Federal Exchange has done by targeting unemployment.

Willem Buiter of Citi told the FT there would be few benefits of a change even if a "more sensible alternative" to the inflation target were chosen.

"A nominal GDP growth rate target would be unhelpful," he said.

Former MPC member Dame DeAnne Julius agreed, saying it would be very risky for the Government to change the MPC's remit to allow higher inflation, for example, by switching to a target for nominal GDP.

"The markets would react by requiring a higher interest rate on government debt," she said.

However, Alan Clarke of Scotia Bank told the newspaper that the BoE had been implicitly targeting nominal GDP for several years.

"The Governor and various MPC members have argued that they could have hit the inflation target, but at the cost of a deeper recession and elevated unemployment," he said.

"That sounds like a nominal GDP target to me. I think it would be better just to be honest and change the target rather than denying it."

Kate Barker, another former MPC member, said there was "no easy way out".

"A reconsideration of the MPC's remit seems desirable longer-term to ensure no repeat of the mistakes of the early 2000s, when the MPC was too focused on achieving a relatively precise short-term inflation target," she said.

For the full replies on the question on whether the Treasury should - or will - change the Bank of England monetary policy remit, go to www.ft.com

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