Henry Thornton (1760-1815), whose major work - An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain - is celebrating its bicentennary in 2002, is considered today to be one of the most prominent classical monetary economist, in particular with regard to its seminal...

The literature on the behavior of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has focused on static voting patterns. We find statistical support for a dynamic pattern using a panel reaction function to analyze MPC votes over the 1997-2008 period. We find that internal and external...

This article reviews the impact of commercial real estate (CRE hereafter) on macro-financial stability and gives some ideas, how central banks could deal with the risk. First, we present the main features of the CRE market, explain its cycle and outline risks related to this market. Its relation...

The Bank of England operates the United Kingdom's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) infrastructure for the settlement of electronic sterling transfers. This infrastructure plays a vital role in the safe functioning of the UK financial system and in fulfilling the Bank's core purposes —...

Top-down stress testing is one way of assessing the resilience of the financial system to the risks it might face now or in the future. The Risk Assessment Model of Systemic Institutions (RAMSI) developed at the Bank of England is an example of a top-down stress-testing model and is part of the...

Henry Thornton's Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802) established once and for all the notion that central banks have the prime responsibility for controlling the money stock and the price level. This theme and the analytical framework underlying it reappeared in the famous Bullion Report...

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) are shadowed by professionals and academic economists who provide a separate policy rate recommendation in advance of the central bank's announcement. We explore differences between shadow and actual committee decisions based on an...