Why have central banks become more accountable and transparent in recent years? This paper considers a set of analytical models of monetary policy institutions to shed light on this. One conclusion it reaches is that uncertainty - regarding the central bank's inflation preferences or about the...

I was delighted to be asked to give the IFS Annual Lecture for 1994, not least because of my own connections with the Institute. These began with my participation in the meetings of IFS, and continued as a member of the Meade Committee in the 1970s. The work of that Committee — led by James...

In this paper, we examine a new survey of 6,010 United States households and estimate a model for the allocation of total net worth among different assets. The paper has three main aims. The first is to investigate the extent to which a conventional portfolio choice model can explain the...