IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uwe/wpaper/20111110.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring the Policymaker’s Credibility: The Bank of England in ‘nice’ and ‘not-so-nice’ times

Author

Listed:
  • Iris Biefang-Frisancho Mariscal

    (University of the West of England, Bristol)

  • Woon Wong

    (University of the West of England, Bristol)

  • Peter Howells

    (University of the West of England, Bristol)

Abstract

In the course of the last year or so, the Bank of England has come under pressure to raise interest rates on the grounds that a ‘lax’ monetary policy in the face of persistent overshoots of the inflation target risks undermining the Bank’s hard-won credibility. Using the Bayesian as well as time-varying coefficient Kalman-Filter techniques, and four different measures of inflation expectations, this paper looks at the effect of recent events upon the Bank of England’s credibility. Briefly, we find that on most measures of inflation expectations the credibility built up during the relatively benign years from the adoption of an explicit inflation target in 1992 to the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 has deteriorated since. Although our investigation is focused in this paper on the Bank of England, it is easily transferred to the examination of other central banks and represents an advance on other measures of credibility widely used in the existing literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Iris Biefang-Frisancho Mariscal & Woon Wong & Peter Howells, 2011. "Measuring the Policymaker’s Credibility: The Bank of England in ‘nice’ and ‘not-so-nice’ times," Working Papers 20111110, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwe:wpaper:20111110
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.uwe.ac.uk/faculties/BBS/BUS/Research/economics/1110_Measuring_credibility_v10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernanke, Ben S. & Mihov, Ilian, 1997. "What does the Bundesbank target?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1025-1053, June.
    2. Breedon, Francis & Hume, Michael, 2007. "Does the European Central Bank have a credibility problem?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 438-442, June.
    3. Demir, Banu & Yigit, Taner M., 2008. "Announcements and credibility under inflation targeting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 249-253, August.
    4. Timothy Besley & Kevin Sheedy, 2010. "Monetary Policy Under Labour," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 212(1), pages 15-33, April.
    5. Gianni Amisano & Marco Tronzano, 2010. "Assessing European Central Bank'S Credibility During The First Years Of The Eurosystem: A Bayesian Empirical Investigation," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 78(5), pages 437-459, September.
    6. Peter Stella, 2005. "Central Bank Financial Strength, Transparency, and Policy Credibility," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 52(2), pages 335-365, September.
    7. Alan S. Blinder, 1999. "Central Banking in Theory and Practice," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262522608, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cem Cakmakli & Selva Demiralp, 2020. "A Dynamic Evaluation of Central Bank Credibility," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 2015, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    2. de Freitas Val, Flávio & Klotzle, Marcelo Cabus & Pinto, Antonio Carlos Figueiredo & Gaglianone, Wagner Piazza, 2017. "Estimating the credibility of Brazilian monetary policy using a Kalman filter approach," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 37-53.
    3. Flávio de Freitas Val & Wagner Piazza Gaglianone & Marcelo Cabus Klotzle & Antonio Carlos Figueiredo Pinto, 2017. "Estimating the Credibility of Brazilian Monetary Policy using Forward Measures and a State-Space Model," Working Papers Series 463, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    4. In Do Hwang, 2018. "Central Bank Reputation and Inflation-Unemployment Performance: Empirical Evidence from an Executive Survey of 62 Countries," Working Papers 2018-14, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. de Freitas Val, Flávio & Klotzle, Marcelo Cabus & Pinto, Antonio Carlos Figueiredo & Gaglianone, Wagner Piazza, 2017. "Estimating the credibility of Brazilian monetary policy using a Kalman filter approach," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 37-53.
    2. Faust, Jon & Svensson, Lars E O, 2002. "The Equilibrium Degree of Transparency and Control in Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(2), pages 520-539, May.
    3. Flávio de Freitas Val & Wagner Piazza Gaglianone & Marcelo Cabus Klotzle & Antonio Carlos Figueiredo Pinto, 2017. "Estimating the Credibility of Brazilian Monetary Policy using Forward Measures and a State-Space Model," Working Papers Series 463, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    4. Giuseppe De Arcangelis & Giorgio Di Giorgio, 1999. "Monetary policy shocks and transmission in Italy: A VAR analysis," Economics Working Papers 446, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    5. Manna, Michele, 2002. "Using money market rates to assess the alternatives of fixed vs. variable rate tenders: the lesson from 1989-1998 data for Germany," Working Paper Series 0186, European Central Bank.
    6. Helge Berger & Ulrich Woitek, "undated". "Does Conservatism Matter? A Time Series Approach to Central Banking," Working Papers 9814, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow, revised May 1999.
    7. Cem Cakmakli & Selva Demiralp, 2020. "A Dynamic Evaluation of Central Bank Credibility," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 2015, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    8. Giuseppe Fontana & Alfonso Palacio-Vera, 2004. "Monetary Policy Uncovered: Theory and Practice," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 1-19.
    9. Dumitriu, Ramona & Stefanescu, Răzvan, 2013. "Decizii strategice ale politicii monetare [Strategic decisions of the Monetary Policy]," MPRA Paper 51242, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Nov 2013.
    10. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Jakob de Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2024. "Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 425-457, June.
    11. Alex Cukierman & Anton Muscatelli, 2001. "Do Central Banks have Precautionary Demands for Expansions and for Price Stability?," Working Papers 2002_4, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow, revised Mar 2002.
    12. repec:zbw:bofitp:2008_015 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Thomas Sargent & Noah Williams & Tao Zha, 2006. "Shocks and Government Beliefs: The Rise and Fall of American Inflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1193-1224, September.
    14. Carlo Rosa & Giovanni Verga, 2006. "The Impact of Central Bank Announcements on Asset Prices in Real Time: Testing the Efficiency of the Euribor Futures Market," CEP Discussion Papers dp0764, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2942 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Josh Ryan-Collins, 2015. "Is Monetary Financing Inflationary? A Case Study of the Canadian Economy, 1935-75," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_848, Levy Economics Institute.
    17. Batini, Nicoletta & Harrison, Richard & Millard, Stephen P., 2003. "Monetary policy rules for an open economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11-12), pages 2059-2094, September.
    18. Lars E. O. Svensson, 1999. "Monetary policy issues for the Eurosystem," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    19. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2961 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. López Díaz, J., 1999. "Divergencia real en la unión monetaria: Un ejercicio de simulación," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 13, pages 87-100, Diciembre.
    21. Wieland, Volker, 2000. "Monetary policy, parameter uncertainty and optimal learning," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 199-228, August.
    22. Stephen Quinn & William Roberds, 2016. "Death of a Reserve Currency," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 63-103, December.
    23. Robert H. Rasche & Daniel L. Thornton, 2002. "The FOMC's balance-of-risks statement and market expectations of policy actions," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 84(Sep), pages 37-50.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwe:wpaper:20111110. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jo Michell (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/seuweuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.