Ryland Thomas

The Impact of QE on the UK Economy – Some Supportive Monetarist Arithmetic

This paper uses a simple money demand and supply framework to estimate the impact of quantitative easing (QE) on asset prices and nominal spending. We use standard money accounting to try to establish the impact of asset purchases on broad money holdings. We show that the initial impact of £200 billion of asset purchases on the money supply was partially offset by other ‘shocks’ to the money supply. Some of these offsets may have been the indirect result of QE. Our central case estimate is that QE boosted the broad money supply by £122 billion or 8%. We apply our estimates of the impact of QE on the money supply to a set of ‘monetarist’ econometric models that articulate the extent to which asset prices and spending need to adjust to make the demand for money consistent with the increased broad money supply associated with QE. Our preferred, central case estimate is that an 8% increase in money holdings may have pushed down on yields by an average of around 150 basis points in 2010 and increased asset values by approximately 20%. This in turn would have had a peak impact on output of 2% by the start of 2011, with an impact on inflation of 1 percentage point around a year later. These estimates are necessarily uncertain and we show the sensitivity of our results to different assumptions about the size of the shock to the money supply and the nature of the transmission mechanism.

Money, Debt and Prices in the United Kingdom, 1705-1996

This paper constructs a consistent series for the market value of UK government debt over almost 300 years, analysing how monetary and fiscal policy affect the path of the UK price level. Specifically, it examines the interactions between debts, deficits, the monetary base and the price level. Overall, the price level has been closely related to the evolution of the base money supply. Across different sample periods, there is little econometric evidence that fiscal policy has affected the course of the price level (or of the exchange rate under the Gold Standard). Government debt has not significantly affected the base money stock, either.

Has Weak Lending and Activity in the United Kingdom Been Driven by Credit Supply Shocks

This paper investigates the role of credit demand and supply shocks in driving the weakness in UK banks’ lending and economic activity during both the recent financial crisis and the various UK financial crises since 1966. It uses a structural vector autoregression analysis to identify separate credit demand and supply shocks in addition to the standard macroeconomic shocks that are typically analysed in this framework. It finds that credit supply shocks can account for most of the weakness in bank lending since the onset of the crisis and between a third and a half of the fall in GDP relative to its historic trend. It also finds that credit supply shocks appear to behave more like aggregate supply shocks than aggregate demand shocks because they cause output and inflation to move in opposite directions. This may be because credit supply shocks affect potential supply in the economy or because they have a significant exchange rate effect. The results appear robust to different identifying assumptions. The main sensitivity appears to be when spreads are treated as a non-stationary variable and long-run restrictions are placed on the model.

The Impact of Permanent Energy Price Shocks on the UK Economy

This paper outlines the properties of one of the models used at the Bank of England for analysing the impact of energy prices on the UK economy. We build a dynamic general equilibrium model that includes a variety of channels through which energy prices affect demand and supply. On the demand side we model household consumption of final energy goods (petrol and utilities) separately from other goods and services. On the supply side, we model the production of final energy goods and the way that they enter the production process of other goods and services. We calibrate the model using UK data and examine how the various channels in the model contribute to the responses to permanent energy price shocks of a similar magnitude to those observed in the recent data. We show the effects of such shocks have important implications for monetary policy.

Has Weak Lending and Activity in the UK been Driven by Credit Supply Shocks

This paper investigates the role of credit supply shocks in driving the weakness in UK banks’ lending and economic activity during the various UK financial crises since 1966. It uses a structural VAR analysis to identify credit supply shocks separately from standard macroeconomic shocks. It finds that credit supply shocks can account for most of the weakness in bank lending since the onset of the recent financial crisis and 1/3 – 1/2 of the fall in GDP relative to its historic trend. It also finds that credit supply shocks behave more like aggregate supply shocks than aggregate demand shocks.

A Sectoral Framework for Analyzing Money, Credit and Unconventional Monetary Policy

This paper sets out an empirical framework for examining the dynamics of money and credit at a sectoral level. Our purpose is to understand and monitor the transmission mechanisms of different policies that affect the financial sector, with an eye to practical policy analysis. We use the banking system’s balance sheet as an organising framework and model the stocks of broad money and credit held by different sectors. Each sector is modelled as a separate block with money, credit, and sectoral expenditure modelled jointly together with the relevant financial yields. The sectors are then knitted together using aggregate relationships and identities. Overall the model can be thought of as an estimated disaggregated version of the IS-LM-CC model which additionally incorporates the principle that ‘loans create deposits’. We illustrate, by example, how this framework can be used in practice: first by examining the sectoral transmission of quantitative easing and second, the effect of disturbances to credit markets. We also discuss how other policy tools, such as the Funding for Lending Scheme and macroprudential policies, could be examined in our framework.

The Analysis of Money and Credit During the Financial Crisis: The Approach At the Bank of England

This chapter discusses the empirical analysis of money and credit undertaken at the Bank of England during the financial crisis and how it is used. An aggregate structural vector autoregression sVAR including money is employed to analyse the impact of quantitative easing (QE), as a crosscheck on other approaches focussing on the impact on financial market prices. Sectoral models of money and credit are used to assess the impact of the crisis and the associated shock to credit conditions. The contraction in the supply of credit to each sector can explain a substantial proportion of the shortfall in GDP relative to its pre-crisis trend. The shocks can also explain a large part of the fall in credit and much of the contraction in the customer funding gap.