This paper undertakes a Bayesian analysis of optimal monetary policy for the United Kingdom. We estimate a suite of monetary policy models that include both forward and backward-looking representations as well as large and small-scale models. We find an optimal simple Taylor-type rule that...

This paper carries out a systematic investigation into the possibility of structural shifts in the UK economy using a Markov-switching dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. We find strong evidence for shifts in the structural parameters of several equations of the DSGE model. In...

This paper introduces the Bank of England's new forecasting platform and provides examples of how it can be applied to practical forecasting problems. The platform consists of four components: COMPASS, a structural central organising model; a suite of models, used to fill in the gaps in the...

This paper uses a ‘trendy' approach to understand UK inflation dynamics. It focuses on the time series to isolate a low-frequency and slow-moving component of inflation (the trend) from deviations around this trend. We find that this slow-moving trend explains a substantial share of UK...

We use daily transactional ledger data from the Bank of England's Archive to test whether and to what extent the Bank of England during the mid-nineteenth century adhered to Walter Bagehot's rule that a central bank in a financial crisis should lend cash freely at a penalty rate in exchange for...

This paper explores the cross-border transmission of monetary policy by comparing and contrasting the results for two major international financial centres: Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. We examine the effect of monetary policy in the US, euro area and Japan, on UK and Hong Kong-resident...

We investigate the impact of the asset purchase program (APP) introduced by the Bank of England (BOE) in 2009 on the composition of assets of UK banks, and the implications for bank lending to the real economy, using a unique database on the program. Knowing the identity of the banks that...

It is well known that quantitative credit restrictions, rather than Bagehot-style ‘free lending' constituted the standard response to financial crises in the early days of central banking. But why did central banks in the past frequently restrict the supply of loans during financial crises? In...

In this paper, we use an estimated DSGE model of the UK economy to investigate perceptions of the effectiveness of monetary policy since the onset of the 2007–08 financial crisis in a number of measures of deflation probability — the Survey of Economic Forecasts, financial-market option...

In this paper, we use an open economy model of the United Kingdom to examine the extent to which monetary policy should respond to movements in sectoral inflation rates. To do this we construct a Generalised Taylor model that takes specific account of the sectoral make up of the consumer price...