Two alternative functional forms of the demand for money that focus on how an economy as a whole adjusts its cash balances have been discussed in the literature. One functional form is obtained by regarding the money supply as exogenous and the price level as endogenous and the other by...

This paper investigates the relationship between credit risk and liquidity components in the interbank spread and how this relationship unfolded during the recent financial crisis. We find that prior to the central bank’s Bank of England’s intervention counterpart risk was a major factor in...

In the course of the last year or so, the Bank of England has come under pressure to raise interest rates on the grounds that a ‘lax’ monetary policy in the face of persistent overshoots of the inflation target risks undermining the Bank’s hard-won credibility. Using the Bayesian as well...

The few papers that explore different ways to measure shipping freight dynamics have differed in their interpretation of the most suitable measure for conditional freight volatility and consequently for the most appropriate freight risk measure. Furthermore, recent empirical work in maritime...

This essay looks at the foundation and development of the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, through the perspective of the recent debate over central bank independence in the design of optimal monetary policy. It shows that the creators of the Federal Reserve were acutely aware that...

The notion that the quantity of money in an economy might be endogenously determined has a long history. Even so, it has never been part of mainstream economic thinking which has remained dominated by the view that the policymaker somehow controls the stock of money and that interest rates are...

In little more than twenty years, it has become widely accepted that the optimal design of monetary policy should include provision for a central bank that is independent of government influence. This is a remarkably short period of time for any idea in economics to become so widely-accepted....

In the last fifteen years or so the conduct of monetary policy in developed economies has converged in a number of ways which include an increasing emphasis on ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’ in policy-making. There is a widespread belief that transparency in the conduct of UK monetary...

It is widely believed that institutional arrangements influence the quality of monetary policy outcomes. Judged on its ‘transparency’ characteristics, therefore the Bank of England should do better than both the Bundesbank and ECB. However, studies based on market evidence show that on...

The last fifteen years have seen the emergence of widespread consensus that optimum monetary policy is designed on the basis of three pillars: a short-term official rate of interest as the sole policy instrument and the placing of that instrument in the hands of a central bank which is (a)...