We evaluate the degree of gradualism and inaction in UK monetary policy over the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) period (1997-2007) at the quarterly and the monthly frequency. After accounting for misspecification in standard Taylor rules, we find little evidence for gradualism. A measure of...

The latter half of the 1990s saw a sharp rise in entry of banks from developed countries into emerging market financial systems. This was motivated by, among other things, the belief that expansion into underdeveloped financial markets would result in diversification and efficiency gains, and...

This paper investigates empirically whether the level or growth of cheap imports from China has had an impact on UK inflation. We use two methods; the first calculates UK weighted world export price inflation as the sum of the effect of the inflation level in the UK's trading partners and the...

The recent financial crisis was accompanied by an unprecedented deterioration in businesses’ expectations for future economic activity. This article examines the strength of the signal that measures of these expectations have provided for output growth in the past. Recessions have typically...

Can the knife-edge restriction on technology imposed by standard endogenous growth models be relaxed by allowing for nonrenewable resources entering the technology? To answer this question we examine whether stable endogenous growth is compatible with increasing returns to scale with respect to...

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...

In aggregate models, costs that penalise changes in investment - investment adjustment costs - have been introduced to help account for a variety of business cycle and asset market phenomena. In this paper, we evaluate empirical evidence for these types of costs using US and UK industry data. We...

This paper estimates UK capital adjustment costs, using a data set for 34 industries spanning the whole UK economy for the period 1970-2000. The results show that it is costly to install new capital, and that it has been more costly to adjust the level of non-ICT capital (plant, machinery,...