Question 2: When housing-related risk is deemed excessive from the viewpoint of financial stability, do you agree that the correct response is to deploy macro-prudential tools, leaving interest rates focused on the needs of inflation and aggregate real activity?
Answer:
Disagree
Confidence level:
Very confident
Comment:
Macroprudential tools are untried and untested, while we think we know what we are doing with interest rates, so they should be kept as a backstop to act against asset price rises if the macroprudential tools turn out not to work well. More importantly, the Bank of England should commit (should already have committed) to use interest rates in this way if necessary, so that the knowledge of that feeds into asset price expectations and therefore outcomes.
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Question 1: Do you agree it is time for more robust policy action to prevent a build-up of excessive housing-related risk?
Answer:
Strongly Agree
Confidence level:
Very confident
Comment:
There may be some lags between house prices in London and elsewhere, and even some special factors in London, but we should be sceptical of the argument that This Time is Different. The house price rise makes clear the failure of policy since 2010 to bring about any 'rebalancing' of the kind that we all talked about after 2008, and the risk that we end up with a futile cycle of debt and asset price inflation leading eventually to a bust.
Assuming that Scotland becomes an independent country, do you agree that the UK government's position of ruling out a monetary union is in the economic interests of the continuing UK?
Answer:
Agree
Confidence level:
Very confident
Comment:
I'm assuming that it would not be possible to negotiate satisfactory fiscal constraints or satisfactory financial regulatory arrangements to make a monetary union acceptable in economic terms for the continuing UK - because genuinely satisfactory constraints and arrangements would in effect preclude anything that could be called independence for Scotland.
Question 1
Do you agree that that Scotland would better off in economic terms as an independent country?
Answer:
Neither agree nor disagree
Confidence level:
Very confident
Comment:
There are so many unknowns (some of them unknown unknowns) that it is not sensible to argue that Scotland will be better or worse off in economic terms; but in any case the difference is likely to be small.
More importantly, as an economist I want to stress that people should in fact make their decisions on non-economic grounds, in particular this: given that Scotland and the rest of the UK and their peoples are so well integrated, would it be right to pull them apart?
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
UK House Prices and Macro-Prudential Policy July 2014
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Question 2: When housing-related risk is deemed excessive from the viewpoint of financial stability, do you agree that the correct response is to deploy macro-prudential tools, leaving interest rates focused on the needs of inflation and aggregate real activity?
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Question 1: Do you agree it is time for more robust policy action to prevent a build-up of excessive housing-related risk?
Economic Consequences of an Independent Scotland June 2014
Question 2
Assuming that Scotland becomes an independent country, do you agree that the UK government's position of ruling out a monetary union is in the economic interests of the continuing UK?
Question 1
Do you agree that that Scotland would better off in economic terms as an independent country?
Euro Area Deflation and Risk for UK Economy May 2014
Question 2
Do you agree that a deflation in the Euro area (as defined in Question 1) would pose a considerable risk to the UK recovery?
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