Philip Bunn

Company Accounts-Based Modelling of Business Failures and the Implications for Financial Stability

In this paper the determinants of failure among individual UK public and private companies are examined, over the period from 1991 to 2001. Using information on profitability, interest cover, capital gearing, liquidity, company size, industry, whether a firm is a subsidiary and overall economic conditions, it is possible to construct estimates of the probability of failure for individual companies. These are used to calculate each companys debt at risk: the probability of failure multiplied by its outstanding debt. By summing the firm-level debt at risk over all companies it is possible to produce an aggregate measure of financial risk that takes account of how debt is distributed across individual companies. Aggregate debt at risk, as a percentage of total debt, has fallen from the levels reached in the early 1990s and has remained relatively stable despite the build-up in corporate debt since then.

Corporate Expenditures and Pension Contributions: Evidence from UK Company Accounts

This paper examines how corporate behaviour is related to financial pressure, where the financial pressure is on account of pension contributions to the company pension scheme. Using a large panel of quoted non-financial UK firms from 1983-2002, we estimate generalised methods of moments models for dividends and investment. Our results suggest that dividends are reduced in response to higher pension contributions. There is only weak evidence of any impact on investment. Companies that seek to tackle underfunding of defined benefit pension schemes by raising their contributions could pay lower dividends than they would have otherwise.

How Do Individual UK Consumer Prices Behave

This paper examines the behaviour of individual consumer prices in the United Kingdom, and uncovers a number of stylised facts about pricing behaviour. First, on average 19% of prices change each month, although this falls to 15% if sales are excluded. Second, the probability of price changes is not constant over time. Third, goods prices change more frequently than services prices. Fourth, the distribution of price changes is wide, although a significant number of changes are relatively small and close to zero. Fifth, prices that change more frequently tend to do so by less. We find that conventional pricing theories struggle to match these results, particularly the marked heterogeneity, which argues against the use of ‘representative agent’ models.

Household debt and spending in the United Kingdom

Household debt rose sharply in the United Kingdom in the decade before the financial crisis. This paper uses household level microdata to investigate the relationship between mortgage debt and consumption. We find evidence that more highly indebted groups of households made larger cuts in spending following the financial crisis: spending cuts associated with debt may have reduced the level of aggregate private consumption by up to 2% after 2007. Survey data suggest that large cuts in spending by indebted households after 2007 may reflect a combination of tighter credit conditions and increased concerns about ability to make future debt repayments. The potential for household indebtedness to lead to large adverse impacts on aggregate demand was an important reason why the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee took policy action at its June 2014 meeting.