Quarterly Bulletin
Summer 2006 Contents

Markets and operations (1mb)
Box on equity variance swaps
Box on forward rates and economists' expectations
Box on using option prices to derive a probability distribution for the sterling exchange rate index
Box on hedging inflation exposures by swap dealers
Box on decomposing changes in annuity rates
Box on the work of the Securities Lending and Repo Committee

House prices and consumer spending (410k)
Box on how important are the different channels from house prices to consumer spending?
Box on the role of mortgage equity withdrawal
Box on estimating the role of housing

Investing in inventories (268k)

Cost-benefit analysis of monetary and financial statistics (181k)
Box on cost-benefit analysis in other institutions
Box on case study: review of information collected on the industrial composition of banks' business with UK residents (forms AD and AL)

Summaries of recent Bank of England working papers (126k)

Defined benefit company pensions and corporate valuations: simulation and empirical evidence from the United Kingdom

UK monetary regimes and macroeconomic stylised facts

Affine term structure models for the foreign exchange risk premium

Switching costs in the market for personal current accounts: some evidence for the United Kingdom

Resolving banking crises - an analysis of policy options

How does the down-payment constraint affect the UK housing market?

Productivity growth, adjustment costs and variable factor utilisation: the UK case

Sterling implications of a US current account reversal

Optimal monetary policy in a regime-switching economy: the response to abrupt shifts in exchange rate dynamics

Optimal monetary policy in Markov-switching models with rational expectations agents

Optimal discretionary policy in rational expectations models with regime switching

Public attitudes to inflation (455k)
Box on the Bank of England/GfK NOP survey on Inflation Attitudes

The Centre for Central Banking Studies (219k)

A review of the work of the London Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee in 2005 (123k)

Uncertainty, the implementation of monetary policy, and the management of risk (2.2mb)
Speech by Paul Tucker, Executive Director for Markets and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, to the Association of Corporate Treasurers in Newport on 19 May 2006

Reflections on operating inflation targeting (366k)
Speech by Paul Tucker, Executive Director for Markets and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, delivered at the Chicago Graduate School of Business on 25 May 2006

Cost pressures and the UK inflation outlook (277k)
Speech by Kate Barker, member of the Monetary Policy Committee, delivered at the CBI West Midlands Economic Dinner in Birmingham on 21 March 2006

The UK current account deficit and all that (328k)
Speech by Stephen Nickell, member of the Monetary Policy Committee, delivered on 25 April 2006

A shift in the balance of risks (194k)
Speech by David Walton, member of the Monetary Policy Committee, given at a lunch organised by the Bank of England's Central Southern Agency on 18 May 2006

What do we now know about currency unions? (297k)
Paper by Michael Artis, George Fellow, Bank of England, presenting the text of an inaugural lecture given at the Bank of England in December 2005 in memory of John Flemming