We test whether quantitative easing (QE) provided a boost to bank lending in the United Kingdom, in addition to the effects on asset prices, demand and inflation focused on in most other studies. Using a data set available to researchers at the Bank, we use two alternative approaches to identify...

We assess the impact of introducing an efficient payment system on financial intermediation. Two channels are investigated. Innovations in wholesale payments technology enhance the security and speed of inside money as a payment medium for customers and therefore affect the split between...

We develop a macroeconomic model in which commercial banks can offload risky loans to a ‘shadow’ banking sector, and financial intermediaries trade in securitised assets. We analyse the responses of aggregate activity, credit supply and credit spreads to business cycle and financial shocks....

Evidence abounds on the propagation of financial stresses originating in the US mortgage market to banking systems worldwide through international funding markets. But the transmission of this external funding shock to the real economy via bank lending is surprisingly underexamined, given the...

We investigate how settlement banks in CHAPS, the United Kingdom's large-value payment system, deal with operational risk. In particular, we are interested in payments behaviour towards a bank that is, for operational reasons, unable to make but able to receive payments. If other banks did not...

This paper develops and simulates a model of the emergence of networks in an interbank, RTGS payment system. A number of banks, faced with random streams of payment orders, choose whether to link directly to the payment system, or to use a correspondent bank. Settling payments directly on the...

Large, international banking groups have sought to centralise their cross-currency liquidity management: liquidity shortages in one currency are financed using liquidity surpluses in another currency. The nature of risks to financial stability emerging from global liquidity management depends on...

This paper analyses the conduct of monetary policy in an environment where households’ desire to amass precautionary savings is influenced by fluctuations in the volatilities of disturbances that hit the economy. It uses a simple New Keynesian model with external habit formation that is...

This paper studies the optimal intraday pricing in payment systems and its impact on banks’ payment behaviour and intraday liquidity management. A model is developed to compare the performance of two different mechanisms to reduce payment delay: a throughput guideline and a tariff that varies...

We identify a ‘risk news' shock in a vector autoregression (VAR), modifying Barsky and Sims’s procedure, while incorporating sign restrictions to simultaneously identify monetary policy, technology and demand shocks. The VAR-identifed risk news shock is estimated to account for around 2%-12%...