Central bankers are engaged in the most sweeping rethink of their role in decades, spurred by the success of tight collaboration with governments in countering the pandemic crisis and a new political reality of increased demands on monetary policymakers.

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB), and emerging-market counterparts like Bank Indonesia are among those that enabled fiscal authorities to ramp up emergency spending without driving borrowing costs up, through large-scale bond purchases.

As the crisis recedes, many policymakers favor keeping their expanded role in shaping economies—and even broadening it further, to incorporate social goals such as climate change and curbing inequality. The new pact has been enabled by sustained low inflation in recent years, any change to which could again shift policymakers' views.