This paper uses the British New Earnings Survey (NES) to derive both macro and micro measures of wage rigidities. The data set spans the 1975-2000 period, with wage observations covering approximately 1% of the British workforce. Using this data set, we consider whether wages have become more...

The Bank of England has constructed a 'suite of statistical forecasting models' (the 'Suite') providing judgement-free statistical forecasts of inflation and output growth as one of many inputs into the forecasting process, and to offer measures of relevant news in the data. The Suite combines a...

Quantitative easing (QE) has become a key component of the monetary policy toolkit since the global financial crisis. However substantial uncertainty remains about the impact of QE on market liquidity. Identifying the impact is particularly challenging due to the potential for reverse causality,...

We consider several economic uncertainty indicators for the US and UK before and during the Covid-19 pandemic: implied stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic policy uncertainty, twitter chatter about economic uncertainty, subjective uncertainty about future business growth, and...

Macroprudential regulators worldwide have introduced regulations to limit household leverage in light of existing evidence which suggests that high leverage is associated with household distress during crisis. We analyse the distributional effects of such a macroprudential policy on mortgage and...

The UK's decision to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum created substantial uncertainty for UK businesses. The nature of this uncertainty is different from that of a typical uncertainty shock because of its length, breadth and political complexity. Consequently, a new firm-level survey, the...

The mortgage market has played a central role in the global financial crisis. One particularly pressing question surrounds the conditions under which mortgage borrowers enter distress, ie get into arrears or default. This paper develops a novel micro dataset from residential mortgage loans which...

We have developed a structural model to explain defined benefit (DB) pension funds' investment behaviour. The model is calibrated to the aggregate UK DB pension fund and four different cohorts of funds. We use the model to estimate how pension funds can be expected to adjust their asset...

In 1853 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate whether laws related to limited liability in Britain needed to be modified. As part of its evidence gathering the commission issued a questionnaire that included a number of questions on whether banks should be subject to the same liability...

This paper examines the effects of competition on bank stability in the United Kingdom between 1994 and 2013. We construct several measures of competition and test the relationship between competition and bank stability. We find that, on average, competition lowers stability, but that its effect...