Monetary policy
BoE MPC voted 6-3 to cut rates to 5.5%-minutes
UNITED KINGDOM - Six of the nine members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee voted to cut the repo rate to 5.5% from 5.75% during their last meeting on Apr. 4-5, according to minutes of that meeting released on Apr 18, 2001.
Swiss mon policy during 1970s-lessons for Japan
CENTRAL BANK RESEARCH - Peter Kugler from Basel University and Georg Rich from the Swiss National Bank have published a paper "Monetary Policy Under Low Interest Rates: The Experience of Switzerland in the late 1970s". Using evidence from Switzerland's…
Monetary policy for an open economy-McCallum
ARTICLE - Bennett McCallum and Edward Nelson have written an article "Monetary Policy for an Open Economy: An Alternative Framework with Optimizing Agents and Sticky Prices". The authors use an alternative approach for constructing open economy models by…
Business economist Barker appointed to BoE's MPC
UNITED KINGDOM - The UK Treasury said on Apr 5 that the chief economist at the Confederation of British Industry, Kate Barker, will replace DeAnne Julius on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from Jun 1, 2001.
Optimal monetary policy in a currency area
ARTICLE - Pierpaolo Benigno has written an paper "Optimal monetary policy in a currency area" for the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. The author concludes that the European Central Bank should give a higher weight to inflation in the countries…
Bank of England cuts interest rates by 0.25%
UNITED KINGDOM - The Bank of England cut interest rates by another quarter point on Apr 5, 2001, bowing to pressure from tumbling stock markets and weakening economic data.
Financial stability, deflation, & monetary policy
CENTRAL BANK RESEARCH - This working paper by Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond economist Marvin Goodfriend explores the relationship between financial stability, deflation, and monetary policy.He says that monetary policy is a fundamental source of…
Financial mkt implications of the US debt paydown
CENTRAL BANK RESEARCH - The dwindling supply of US treasuries is worrying not only the financial markets but also Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenpsan, one of the reasons he has given his support for Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cuts. In a New York Fed…
BOE Julius to leave central bank in 2 months-FT
UNITED KINGDOM - DeAnne Julius, one of the most dovish members of the Bank of England's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, is poised to leave the central bank in two months.
Poland cuts interest rates by 100 bp
POLAND - Poland's Monetary Policy Council (MPC) cut its interest rates on Mar 28, 2001 by 100 basis points to between 17 and 21 percent, the National Bank of Poland said in a statement.
New measure of core inflation in the UK-BoE paper
CENTRAL BANK RESEARCH - The Bank of England's monetary policy committee research unit has published a paper which addresses the usefulness of measures of core inflation. The paper, commissioned by external MPC member DeAnne Julius, uses an 'improved'…
The New Economy: Myths and Realities-Wadhwani
SPEECH - In his Travers Lecture at the London Guildhall University on Mar 20, 2001, Sushil Wadhwani, an external member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, argues it is possible that measurement issues have led forecasters to overestimate…
RBNZ monetary policy review recommendations
Responding to an independent inquiry into monetary policy, New Zealand Treasury Department officials said on Mar 21, 2001 they will issue recommendations by month's end to Finance Minister Michael Cullen.
BoE ready to cut UK rates if necessary-minutes
Britain's central bank is ready to lower borrowing costs if the global economic outlook worsens or British consumer spending starts to ease, minutes of the Bank's last policy meeting showed on Mar 21, 2001.
BoE ready to act if sharp US downturn-Plenderleith
Britain's central bank will be ready to cut interest rates again if the slowdown in the U.S. economy proves more severe than expected, Bank of England Executive Director Ian Plenderleith said on Mar 14, 2001.
Financial Innovation and Monetary Transmission
SEMINAR - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is hosting a conference titled "Financial Innovation and Monetary Transmission" from Apr 5-6, 2001. This seminar will offer insight into how the enormous changes that are going on in the financial sector…
Impact of macro news announcements on exch rates
Andrew Clare and Roger Courtenay from the Bank of England have written an interesting paper titled "Assessing the impact of macroeconomic news announcements on securities prices under different monetary policy regimes". The study investigates whether the…
Greenspan testimony-unsure about consumer optimism
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan offered a gloomier assessment of the U.S. economic outlook when he testified to the House Financial Services Committee on Feb 28, 2001, suggesting he no longer is sure that consumer confidence is strong enough to…
Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 16, No. 4
The following is the contents including abstracts of the latest issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 16, Issue 4: Winter 2000. Authors include Stanford University's John Taylor and Princeton's Paul Krugman.
Singapore MAS to brief on mon policy twice a year
The Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Feb 26, 2001 it will hold a media briefing twice a year on its monetary policy in an effort to raise transparency.
Time Inconsistency Problem in Monetary Policy?
A paper by Stefania Albanesi, V.V. Chari and Lawrence J. Christiano titled "How Severe is the Time Inconsistency Problem in Monetary Policy?"
UK budget should not influence BoE-MPC's Nickell
The fact that the next policy meeting of Britain's central bank comes the day after the annual budget should not prevent its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) from altering interest rates, an MPC member has said.
Monetary Policy in a Cashless Society-P. de Grauwe
Paul De Grauwe and Claudia Costa have published in association with the Centre for Economic and Policy Research a discussion paper titled "Monetary Policy in a Cashless Society". Their main conclusion is that the central bank will lose its traditional…
Greek cbank warns of inflationary pressures-paper
Greece's central bank believes the government's target of average 2.3 percent inflation in 2001 may be beyond reach if inflationary pressures in the domestic economy are not reined in, Greek newspaper To Vima reported on Feb 18, 2001. Citing sources, To…