In the United Kingdom, many banks access payment systems via relationships with other banks. This introduces risks to financial stability which can be reduced by increasing direct participation. The Bank has worked with the payments industry to increase direct participation in CHAPS, as part of...

This paper investigates the impact of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing policy on UK asset prices. Based on analysis of the reaction of financial market prices and modelbased estimates, we find that asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves - which by February...

As part of its response to the global banking crisis and a sharp downturn in domestic economic prospects, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) began a programme of large-scale asset purchases (commonly referred to as quantitative easing or QE) in March 2009, with the aim of...

The subject of this paper is how the increase in transparency brought about by the Bank of England's operational independence has changed the way in which markets react immediately after economic announcements. Other things being equal, the increase in transparency of the new framework will make...

This paper addresses the problem of comparing the fit of latent class and latent trait models when the indicators are binary and the contingency table is sparse. This problem is common in the analysis of data from large surveys, where many items are associated with an unobservable variable. A...