Macroeconomic performance in the United Kingdom has been disappointing in recent years: for most of the post-crisis period, GDP growth has been unexpectedly weak, and inflation unexpectedly strong. That unexpected weakness in GDP reflects a combination of weaker growth in the United Kingdom's...

Macroeconomic performance in the United Kingdom has been disappointing in recent years: for most of the post-crisis period, GDP growth has been unexpectedly weak, and inflation unexpectedly strong. That unexpected weakness in GDP reflects a combination of weaker growth in the United Kingdom’s...

Dwellings investment (house building and home improvements) can have a large impact on GDP growth. This article presents an economic framework that helps explain movements in UK dwellings investment. House building responded sluggishly to rising house prices in the earlier part of this decade....

This article uses household-level survey data on income and employment to compare labour market dynamics across a range of advanced economies, including Australia. The analysis focuses on how changes in employment status are distributed within countries and how those distributional patterns vary...

The path of labour supply is a key consideration for the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It helps to determine the overall supply capacity of the economy and therefore the amount of output that can be produced without generating excess inflationary pressure. Labour supply appears to have grown...

Employment has fallen during this recession but by much less than the fall in output. This article examines how the behaviour of the labour market compares with previous recessions. A number of factors, including greater flexibility in real wages, may have helped to mitigate the fall in...

The Bank of England and HM Treasury launched the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) in order to encourage lending to households and companies. The FLS offers funding to banks and building societies for an extended period. And it encourages them to supply more credit by making more and cheaper...

Over the past year the recovery in the UK economy appears to have slowed. That weakness in UK demand has been driven by falling consumption, reflecting the challenging environment facing households. This article examines the factors affecting households' budgets and spending decisions using the...

This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans. Money creation in practice differs from some popular misconceptions — banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them, and nor do they...