Financial Stability

Michael Kumhof and Mauricio Salgado-Moreno While ‘unconventional’ balance-sheet policies like quantitative easing (QE) and quantitative tightening (QT) appear to have been successful, it is difficult to separate their macroeconomic and financial stability implications from those of other polices. Hence, in a recent paper, we develop a theoretical framework, focusing on the central bank’s liabilities, that … Continue reading Central bank balance sheet policies and the market for reserves →

David Glanville and Arif Merali Short term interest rate (STIR) futures are the bedrock of interest rate markets, used to price expectations of central bank policy rates and other UK rate derivative markets such as swaps and options (see Figure 1). They are key for the transmission of monetary policy and provide an avenue for … Continue reading Caring for the ‘future’ →

Gabor Pinter, Emil Siriwardane and Danny Walker In September 2022 the interest rate on UK gilts rose by over 100 basis points in four days. These unprecedent market movements are generally attributed to two key factors: the 23 September announcement of expansionary fiscal policy – the so-called ‘mini-budget’ – which was then amplified by forced … Continue reading What caused the LDI crisis? →

Joel Mundy and Matt Roberts-Sklar When markets are volatile, liquidity tends to worsen. This makes it harder to intermediate buyers and sellers. We saw this during the 2022 liability-driven investment (LDI) stress, when the UK government bond (gilt) market exhibited extreme volatility. This illiquidity was also evident in gilt futures, derivatives that support functioning in … Continue reading Futures under stress: how did gilt futures behave in the LDI crisis? →

Miruna-Daniela Ivan, Joshua Lillis, Eduardo Maqui and Carlos Cañon Salazar Funding markets are crucial for healthy and active financial institutions, and consequently for everyone in the economy. The repurchase agreement (repo) market plays a key role in bank and non-bank financial institutions’ (NBFIs’) daily activities by facilitating short-term financing and risk hedging. In this post, we … Continue reading ‘No one length fits all’ – haircuts in the repo market →

Nuri Khayal and Jonathan Loke Many households in the UK have seen their mortgage payments go up since mortgage rates started to increase in 2022. In the current environment of higher rates, the question of how much a household can comfortably spend on their mortgage payments before getting into financial distress is particularly relevant. This … Continue reading The link between mortgage debt servicing burdens and arrears: is there a critical threshold? →

Adam Brinley Codd, Daniel Krause, Pierre Ortlieb and Alex Briers We both drive cars, but the US drives on the right while the UK drives on the left. We both walk, but we do so on sidewalks in the US and pavements in the UK. We both have asset managers, who want to take leveraged … Continue reading Leverage finds a way: a comparison of US Treasury basis trading and the LDI event →

Julian Reynolds Policymakers and market participants consistently cite geopolitical developments as a key risk to the global economy and financial system. But how can one quantify the potential macroeconomic effects of these developments? Applying local projections to a popular metric of geopolitical risk, I show that geopolitical risk weighs on GDP in the central case … Continue reading Quantifying the macroeconomic impact of geopolitical risk →

Jelle Barkema, Maren Froemel and Sophie Piton Record-high firm exits make headlines, but who are the firms going out of business? This post documents three facts about the rising number of corporations dissolving using granular data from Companies House and the Insolvency Service. We show that the increase in dissolutions that have already materialised reflected … Continue reading Three facts about the rising number of UK business exits →

Laura Achiro, Gerry Gunner and Neha Bora A flow of funds framework is a way of understanding and tracking the movement of financial assets between different sectors of the economy. This blog specifically analyses UK corporate and household sectoral flows from 2000 to the present and highlights how this framework can reveal useful trends and … Continue reading Flow of funds and the UK real economy →