Completion of the European Single Market Programme in Financial Services has, as expected, set in motion a rationalisation process within the European banking industry, as banks respond to increasing competitive pressures that are having a dampening effect on their traditional business margins....

Purpose – The paper examines how product innovation in the UK banking industry has been affected and is likely to be affected by changes in regulation and in government policy. It considers the issues faced by banks in pursuing a market‐oriented approach in this environment....

Between the first quarters of 1970 and 1980 the average price of new houses in the United Kingdom increased five-fold. Over the same period building societies grew to become major financial institutions, attracting almost 50 per cent of the personal sector's holdings of liquid assets, and...

Purpose: This paper examines the impact of using the reserve requirements, combined with foreign exchange (FX) intervention, as key instruments in an inflation-targeting framework. Design/methodology/approach: In the context of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework and using...

A congestion charge was introduced in the centre of London in February 2003. At the outset, the charge was justified by local policy makers on the basis of an expected reduction in car journeys which would result in improvements in environmental amenity, relating to increased journey speeds...

This paper presents a study which examines the relationship between published school performance results and house prices in two UK cities. It is postulated that schools which perform better on the most widely recognised measure of performance become oversubscribed and give preference to...