In about half an hour, the Bank of England will announce its decision on interest rates. Each month, on the first or second Thursday, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England meets to decide on monetary policy. The main tool of monetary policy used by economies around the world currently is the interest rate, and the MPC will decide whether it is going to keep the interest rate on hold for another month at its lowest practical value of 0.5%, or whether it will increase interest rates. It faces a tough decision.
Later in term we'll talk quite a bit about monetary and fiscal policy and we'll start to understand just why this decision is so tough. In any state of the world it is hard to forecast and know what is going to happen in the future and hence know the right thing to do with monetary policy.
Currently the Bank has a problem in that economic growth is negative yet inflation is above its target (of 2%). In an ideal world, the Bank would have one of these two problems to deal with, because they demand conflicting responses. Negative growth demands loose monetary policy, hence low interest rates, in order to stimulate economic activity. But high inflation demands tight monetary policy, hence higher interest rates, in order to keep economic activity in check and thus keep inflation down.
There's another part of this difficult question though which the Bank must factor in: Much of our inflation is imported from abroad, as the pound has lost so much value in recent years. As we've learnt recently, if interest rates did rise here in the UK, it is possible that the exchange rate would appreciate, hence reducing that imported inflation effect.
Either way, we lie in wait for the decision, expected in about 24 minutes...
This blog accompanies the econ101ab Principles of Economics course given at the University of Birmingham. The lecturers for both parts of the course (101a, microeconomics and 101b, macroeconomics) will occasionally post here on matters related to lecture material. We hope to show the relevance of the concepts we are teaching at each stage of the course for helping understand how the world works...
Showing posts with label interest rates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interest rates. Show all posts
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
What do Central Banks do?
I'm lecturer for second term (econ101b), which is macroeconomics. Currently Martin Jensen is lecturing you on microeconomics, and so when I post I'll be pointing you towards macroeconomic events and news and how that links in to what we'll look at next term.
One thing we'll ask next term is: What do Central Banks do? They are always in the news, particularly around Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting times in the UK. The Bank of England is the Central Bank for the UK. In the US, a system called the Federal Reserve System operates in place of a single Central Bank, and there are Federal Reserves of a number of regions in the US - Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc. But they all hang together under the Federal Reserve, naturally headquartered in Washington. Their equivalent of the MPC called the FOMC, or the Federal Open Market Committee.*
But what do these Central Banks actually do? Generally they are given responsibility for monetary policy in most economies: The MPC sets interest rates to achieve an inflation target, the idea being that if inflation is kept low and stable, the macroeconomy will stay roughly in order. In the US, the objective of the Federal Reserve is a little wider than just inflation and includes the wider macroeconomy.
There have been many criticisms over the years about whether targetting is the right thing: What's the right target? Why just inflation? Why not asset prices? What is the effect of different targets? An alternative school of thought, pushed more than most by an economist called Scott Sumner, is that Central Banks should target nominal GDP (that's GDP in the actual prices we pay before any correction is carried out for inflation).
It turns out that in its most recent meeting the FOMC hinted it may well begin such a targetting exercise. Next term we'll consider much more what this actually means, other that at the basic level it means that the Federal Reserve would target a particular level of nominal GDP (NGDP) and hence choose interest rates and other monetary tools in order to achieve this aim, just like currently the Bank of England chooses interest rates to achieve 2% inflation.
*: Despite the prevalence of Wikipedia links in this post, the advice is: Don't rely on Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it and hence put false information in there. Rely instead, if you need to for referencing, on something like the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. If you refer to Wikipedia in any assignments you hand in, you'll likely incur the wrath of your tutor!
One thing we'll ask next term is: What do Central Banks do? They are always in the news, particularly around Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting times in the UK. The Bank of England is the Central Bank for the UK. In the US, a system called the Federal Reserve System operates in place of a single Central Bank, and there are Federal Reserves of a number of regions in the US - Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc. But they all hang together under the Federal Reserve, naturally headquartered in Washington. Their equivalent of the MPC called the FOMC, or the Federal Open Market Committee.*
But what do these Central Banks actually do? Generally they are given responsibility for monetary policy in most economies: The MPC sets interest rates to achieve an inflation target, the idea being that if inflation is kept low and stable, the macroeconomy will stay roughly in order. In the US, the objective of the Federal Reserve is a little wider than just inflation and includes the wider macroeconomy.
There have been many criticisms over the years about whether targetting is the right thing: What's the right target? Why just inflation? Why not asset prices? What is the effect of different targets? An alternative school of thought, pushed more than most by an economist called Scott Sumner, is that Central Banks should target nominal GDP (that's GDP in the actual prices we pay before any correction is carried out for inflation).
It turns out that in its most recent meeting the FOMC hinted it may well begin such a targetting exercise. Next term we'll consider much more what this actually means, other that at the basic level it means that the Federal Reserve would target a particular level of nominal GDP (NGDP) and hence choose interest rates and other monetary tools in order to achieve this aim, just like currently the Bank of England chooses interest rates to achieve 2% inflation.
*: Despite the prevalence of Wikipedia links in this post, the advice is: Don't rely on Wikipedia. Anyone can edit it and hence put false information in there. Rely instead, if you need to for referencing, on something like the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. If you refer to Wikipedia in any assignments you hand in, you'll likely incur the wrath of your tutor!
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