Commercial property played a key role in the recent financial crisis in the United Kingdom. A rapid build-up of debt tied to commercial property investments pre-crisis supported a boom in prices. The consequent bust led to a sharp rise in non-performing loans. This episode has many precedents in...

The paper argues that while attempts have been made to reform four of the five key pillars of banks’ operation, (i.e. competition, resolution, supervisory, and auditing and valuation policies), less attention has been paid to the role of bank governance and systemic risk, despite a strong link...

This paper assesses the performance of a simple monetary policy rule - McCallum's rule. This rule targets nominal income using the monetary base as its instrument whilst making an allowance for any on-going changes in money velocity. The paper conducts a range of historical counterfactual...

Over the past year and a half, authors Andy Haldane of the Bank of England and Mark Kruger of the Bank of Canada have been developing a framework for the resolution of international financial crises that aligns incentives for all parties in a way that deals with the crisis and preserves the...

Over the past year and a half, the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada have been developing a framework for the resolution of international financial crises that aligns incentives for all parties to deal with a crisis and preserve the integrity of the international financial system. The...

Why have central banks become more accountable and transparent in recent years? This paper considers a set of analytical models of monetary policy institutions to shed light on this. One conclusion it reaches is that uncertainty - regarding the central bank's inflation preferences or about the...

It has recently been suggested by Robert Lucas that `shoe-leather' costs of inflation may amount to as much as 1% of GNP in the United States. This paper assesses the UK evidence for the period 1970-1994. Similar estimates to those of Lucas are found using his original specification, but a...

A monetary economy comprises a vast array of market-clearing interest rates. Central banks exert a direct influence over only a narrow subset of these rates: the rate at which they supply marginal funds to the commercial banking system. Accordingly, the market interest rates which impinge upon...

On 19 December 2014, the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the Bank of England hosted a discussion forum based around Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the twenty-first century, with a number of economists from academia, public sector bodies and private sector institutions. Four speakers...