When Bank of England (and the Federal Reserve Board) introduced their quantitative easing (QE) operations they emphasised the effects on money and credit, but much of their empirical research on the effects of QE focuses on long-term interest rates. We use a flow of funds matrix with an...

The monetary policy reaction function of the Bank of England is estimated by the standard GMM approach and the ex-ante forecast method developed by Goodhart (2005), with particular attention to the horizons for inflation and output at which each approach gives the best fit. The horizons for the...

The financial crisis, on the one hand, and the recourse to ‘unconventional’ monetary policy, on the other, have given a sharp jolt to perceptions of the role and status of central banks. In this paper we start with a brief ‘contrarian’ history of central banks since the second world war,...

A 'new version' gravity model is used to estimate the effect of de facto exchange rate regimes, as classified by Reinhart and Rogoff (2004), on bilateral trade. The results indicate that, while participation in a common currency union is typically strongly 'protrade' - as first suggested by Rose...

The trade-off between the variability of inflation and that of output is estimated for the UK, using several different approaches to obtain the output gap, and then for a range of other countries; in all cases the trade-off retains the 'sharp turning point' found for the UK and US by other authors.

A large and sustained nominal appreciation in 1996-8 led to a serious and continuing overvaluation of sterling which has been associated with severe pressure on the manufacturing sector. The policy makers had difficulty in understanding past and forecasting future movements of sterling. They...

This article introduces the three contributions to the Feature, which address issues raised by the sterling appreciation of 1996-97 and the subsequent prolonged overvaluation. Cobham discusses the MPC's understanding of exchange rate changes and examines policy makers' responses to the proposal...

Evidence is presented on the extent to which the possibility for the exchange rate to vary has been useful or unhelpful for UK monetary policy over the last two decades. ‘Large’ exchange rate changes and ‘large’ misalignments are identified, and the thinking and actions...