EconReporter

The Bank of England on Thursday released its latest Monetary Policy Report, announcing its decision to lower its policy rate by 25 bps to 4%. The report contains a lot of excellent analysis, including on the recent rise in food prices, the effect of trade war as well as a review of its quantitative tightening policy. But one thing, a comparatively much less important thing, in the review just stuck in my mind...

Ricardo Reis, economics professor at the London School of Economics, explained that there were telling signs that the increase in cost of living started ealry-2021 was not a "transitory" phenomenon.

A story about three economists agree with the prevailing consensus that the Phillips Curve of the US is flattened in the last few decades on the one hand; and dispute the idea that the Phillips Curve is dead on the other.

Federal Reserve decided to cut rate by an supersized 0.5 percentage point. The decision finally ended the weeks-long market debate of whether the central bank would cut 25 or 50 basis points. One important thing, though, didn't reach the headline: The Fed has never been this "confused" about where the natural rate should be.

Since the Euro crisis, investors and policymakers are well aware of the so-called "doom loop" between the banking system and the sovereign. That is, a crisis originating in the banking system (sovereign) will weaken the sovereign (banking system), which in turn will worsen the banking (sovereign) crisis itself. In a recent ECB discussion Paper "Managing the sovereign-bank nexus", the 7 economists - Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Caio Ferreira, Nigel Jenkinson, Luc Laeven, Alberto Martin, Camelia Minoiu, and Alexander Popov - coauthored the paper suggested that the banks and sovereigns are linked by three interacting channels:

An investigation into the probability of a crash in house prices following a housing bubble

Lorie Logan, president of Dallas Fed, expressed worry about uncertainty surrounding the exact level of neutral rate of interest and hinted at the risk that the Federal Reserve's policy rate might already near the point which further rate may starts to fuel inflation again

A careful study of Hong Kong's currency peg that explain why the current low-interest rate environment can be interpreted as a result of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's policy choice.

Quantitative tightening (QT)—a process central banks use to reverse years of liquidity creation from quantitative easing (QE)—is concluding in many advanced economies. The central banks are growing confident that reserve levels in their financial systems are nearing their endpoints. Where are the endpoints of QT and what come next?

Back in November last year, Professor Olivier Blanchard discussed with me about his view that there should be four types of macroeconomics, and "theory...