Reflections on Monetary Policy After 25 Years of the MPC

The Bank of England was given operational independence by the UK Parliament in 1997. The key feature of this independence is that the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee has sole responsibility for setting interest rates to achieve the Government's inflation target. Featuring contributions from leading academics and practitioners, Reflections on Monetary Policy after twenty-five years of the MPC assesses and reflects on this independence, particularly in relation to the activities of the Monetary Policy Committee. The book is organised around four main themes: the remit given to the Bank of England in 1997, the decision-making process by which the Bank determines monetary policy, the use of unconventional policy after the financial crisis of 2007–11, and the scale and scope of the communication that the Bank uses to inform the public. It argues that the economy works best when agents understand why the central bank behaves in a particular way.

Sean Holly is Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Among other books he has published 'Control, Expectations and Uncertainty' (1989) (with A Hughes Hallett), Cambridge University Press. One of his papers was in the top 10 papers, 2005–15, published in the journal Spatial Economic Analysis. His research interests are in macroeconomics, monetary economics, applied econometrics and spatial analysis.

Michael McMahon is Professor of Macroeconomics at University of Oxford, Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh's College, and CEPR research fellow. His interests are macroeconomics, monetary economics, and economic data science. His economics education was from Trinity College Dublin (BA), and the London School of Economics (MSc, MRes, Ph.D.).

Stephen Millard has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University where he studied with the late Nobel Laureate Dale Mortensen. He worked for many years on monetary policy issues at the Bank of England and has published extensively, including in the Economic Journal and the Journal of the European Economic Association.

Anna Watson is the Peter Selman Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge. She was educated at the Warsaw School of Economics (MSc), University of Warwick (MSc) and University of Cambridge (PhD). Anna's research interests are in open-economy macroeconomics, monetary economics and international trade.