The Bank’s Agents have had a long-standing role to provide economic intelligence for monetary policy purposes. Increasingly the Agents have also been gathering intelligence to inform financial stability policy. Developments in credit conditions and property markets are examples of issues...

Low national saving, a persistent current account deficit and the rapid expansion of balance sheets are potential reasons why the UK economy needs to rebalance. Global factors are likely to have been an important driver of these developments, but domestic factors have played an important role in...

Household decisions on whether to save or spend play a key role in the outlook for aggregate demand. A range of factors could help to explain the fall in the household saving ratio over the period 1995 to 2007. Declines in long-term real interest rates, looser credit conditions, rising asset...