This paper quantifies some of the costs of inflation in the United Kingdom. It focuses in particular on inflation distortions under an imperfectly indexed tax system and distortions to money demand. In the United States, an earlier study by Feldstein found that lowering inflation by 2 percentage...

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...

This paper documents some stylized facts on evolving UK Phillips curves, and shows how these differ from their US versions. We interpret UK Phillips curve dynamics in a positive theory of monetary policy - how policy-maker attitudes on the Phillips curve have evolved since the 1950s - rather...

This paper documents some stylized facts on evolving UK Phillips curves, and shows how these differ from their US versions. We interpret UK Phillips curve dynamics in a positive theory of monetary policy û how policy-maker attitudes on the Phillips curve have evolved since the 1950s û rather...

A new CEP report says that the financial system has become far more complicated than it need to be - and dangerously unstable too