We estimate the effect of changes in microprudential regulatory capital requirements on bank capital ratios and bank lending. We do so by running panel regressions using a rich new data set, exploiting variation in individual bank capital requirements in the United Kingdom from 1990-2011. There...

Long-horizon interest rates in the major international bond markets fell sharply during 2004 and 2005, at the same time as US policy rates were rising; a phenomenon famously described as a 'conundrum' by Alan Greenspan the Federal Reserve Chairman. But it was arguably the decline in...

We examine how the Bank of England’s quantitative easing (QE) policy during the global financial crisis affected the investment behaviour of insurance companies and pension funds and whether their behaviour was consistent with the operation of the so-called 'portfolio balance channel' that has...

This paper reviews the main instruments and associated yield curves that can be used to measure financial market participants' expectations of future UK monetary policy rates. We attempt to evaluate these instruments and curves in terms of their ability to forecast policy rates over the period...

There are a large number of labour market indicators that could be used by monetary policy makers to assess the state of the labour market and the associated implications for inflationary pressure. This paper attempts to assess their relative merits by evaluating their past performance in...

We examine the impact of the first phase of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing (QE) programme during March 2009 to January 2010 on the UK government bond (gilt) market, using high-frequency disaggregated data on individual gilts. We find that: QE announcements took varying amounts of...

This paper analyses the nominal and real interest rate term structures in the United Kingdom over the fifteen-year period that the UK monetary authorities have pursued an explicit inflation target, using a four-factor essentially affine term structure model. The model imposes no-arbitrage...

As part of its response to the global banking crisis and a sharp downturn in domestic economic prospects, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) began a programme of large-scale asset purchases (commonly referred to as quantitative easing or QE) in March 2009, with the aim of...

Intertemporal models of the current account suggest that temporary income shocks are fully reflected in a country's net foreign asset position, so that agents invest abroad any savings generated by a positive income shock. On the other hand, a stylised fact in international economics is that...

This paper extends US evidence on the ability of current dividend yields to predict future equity returns in the G5 countries. By using non-parametric methods, evidence of a similar non- linear structure is found in all the countries analysed. This casts doubt on the linear framework adopted in...