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...

Our paper analyses confidential letters sent from the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to banks and building societies it supervises. These letters are a ‘report card' written to firms annually, and are arguably the most important, regularly recurring written...

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...

Financial inclusion means every adult having access to fair and affordable savings, transactional banking, credit and insurance. It also requires consumers of financial services to be literate around their use. Whilst this sounds unobjectionably positive, expanding access to financial products...

This article discusses a small scale pilot to harmonise three Bank of England statistical and regulatory data forms. The primary purpose of the pilot was to assess opportunities for improved operational efficiency in regulatory reporting. The broader purpose was to demonstrate how common data...

Although often applied in other social sciences, text mining has been less frequently used in economics and in policy circles, particularly inside central banks. This Handbook is a brief introduction to the field, discussing how text mining is useful for addressing research topics of interest to...

This article recaps an event held at the Bank of England on 2-3 July 2014. The article covers three main points. First, it situates the event within the context of the Bank's new approach to data as set out in the Bank's Strategic Plan. Second, it summarises and reflects on major themes from the...

This paper examines the important but not often discussed issue of accounting in central banks. It highlights the distinguishing factors that make the financial statements of central banks unique relative to those produced by other bodies. We begin by explaining why central banks produce...

Asset quality is an essential part of sound banking. However, asset quality is difficult for banking regulators and investors to assess in the absence of a common, cross-border scheme to classify assets. Currently no standard is applied universally to classify loans, the most sizable asset on...