Monetary Policy

Aydan Dogan, Melih Firat and Aditya Soenarjo How does the use of imported inputs in production affect inflation dynamics in the UK? Over the past few decades, with the rise of global value chains (GVCs), production processes have become increasingly interlinked across countries and sectors. This interconnection means that firms’ pricing decisions are now more … Continue reading Global value chains and inflation: how imported inputs shape UK prices →

Krishan Shah, Phil Bunn and Marko Melolinna An important way in which monetary policy impacts the economy is through its effects on the capital expenditure of firms. When policy rates are raised (and as long as risk-premia remain unchanged) firms’ cost of capital increases. A higher cost of capital should lead firms to increase their … Continue reading High hurdles: evidence on corporate investment hurdle rates in the UK →

Joanna McLafferty, Kirstine McMillan and Joseph Smart On 7 May 2024 the SONIA rate, the UK’s risk-free reference rate, printed at exactly 5.2000% and has remained there to the end of July 2024 (the time of writing). Flatlining of SONIA is not a phenomenon we see often. Prior to this, over the past six years … Continue reading SONIA: steady as she goes →

Vania Esady Monetary policy actions transmit to inflation and real activity with ‘long and variable’ lags. However, it is not obvious how the effectiveness of monetary policy varies across economic states (for instance pace of economic growth). The academic literature suggests the possibility effects of monetary policy being state dependent. For example, Tenreyro and Thwaites … Continue reading State-dependent effects of UK monetary policy →

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’ →

Jenny Chan, Sebastian Diz and Derrick Kanngiesser In recent years, increases in global energy prices have posed significant challenges for net energy importers such as the UK or the euro area. In addition to the inflationary impact, increases in the relative price of energy imply a decline in real incomes for the energy importers. In … Continue reading Monetary policy in a gas-TANK →

Derrick Kanngiesser and Tim Willems This post describes a systematic way for central banks to employ past forecasts (and associated errors) with the aim of learning more about the structure and functioning of the economy, ultimately to enable a better setting of monetary policy going forward. Results suggest that the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC’s) inflation … Continue reading Forecast accuracy and efficiency at the Bank of England – and how forecast errors can be leveraged to do better →

Tomas Key Nominal wage growth has increased markedly in the UK in recent years, reaching levels that haven’t been seen for more than 20 years. Although growth has moderated a little in recent months, it remains significantly above its pre-pandemic level. An assessment of whether this strong rate of wage growth will persist is a … Continue reading Using sectoral data to estimate the trend in aggregate wage growth →

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 →