Quarterly Bulletin
Agents Articles
| 2008 Q4 | Price-setting behaviour in the United Kingdom  (520k) By Jennifer Greenslade and Miles Parker of the Bank's Structural Economic Analysis Division. It is important for central banks to understand how companies set prices, since price-setting behaviour plays a key role in the monetary policy transmission mechanism. Surveys of companies have been conducted in a variety of countries to shed light on this issue. Earlier this year the Bank of England asked companies who are contacts of the Bank's Agents about how they set prices. The survey adds to and updates our understanding. It indicates that the frequency with which companies change their prices varies considerably across sectors but that over the past decade a significant number have increased the frequency of price changes. Different factors influence price rises and falls but nearly half of companies change their prices within three months of an increase in costs or a fall in demand. |
| 2008 Q1 | The Agents' scores: a review (481k) By Jacqueline Dwyer of the Bank's Inflation Report and Bulletin Division. The Bank's Agents collect economic intelligence from the business community around the United Kingdom, enriching the range of information available to the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). This intelligence is largely qualitative, and provides timely insights into economic conditions and behaviour not available from published data alone. While the greatest value from their intelligence gathering is such insight, Agents also make quantitative judgements about economic conditions in the form of a series of scores. With a decade of scores now available, this article reviews their properties and usefulness. The scores are found to be well correlated with many official data series, with correlations tending to increase through time. Some scores are also useful in predicting revisions to official data, or capturing major turning points in economic activity. Consequently, they make a valuable addition to the broad suite of information reviewed by the MPC in its policy deliberations. |
| Winter 2005 | Introducing the Agents’ scores |
| Spring 2003 | The
Bank's regional Agencies
(65k) (by Phil Eckersley, the Bank's Agent for Northern Ireland and Pamela Webber, of the Bank's Inflation Report and Bulletin Division). This article describes the work of the Bank's regional Agencies, updating that published in the November 1997 Quarterly Bulletin. It outlines, in particular, the contribution of the Agencies to the work of the Monetary Policy Committee. |
| November 1997 | The Bank's regional Agencies (44k) (by John Beverly, the Bank's Agent for the West Midlands). In this article, John Beverly describes the role of the Bank's Agencies. He first sets out a brief history of the Bank's regional representation; the rest of the article outlines the present work of the Agencies within the new monetary policy framework. |
| May 1996 | Bank of England Agents' summary of business conditions |
