What machines taking over pricing means for central banks

Anthony Savagar, Misa Tanaka and Jagdish Tripathy

With increased availability of big data and computing power, more firms are adopting algorithmic and AI-powered pricing to adjust prices rapidly in response to changing economic conditions over time and across consumers. This post reviews the existing research, draws implications for central banks, and identifies areas for further research on this topic. The research reviewed here was also used to inform Lombardelli and Patel (2026). The existing research suggests that new pricing technologies will lead to faster pass-through of shocks to prices, greater market segmentation, and may improve the inflation-output trade-off for monetary policy makers. To ensure price stability, central banks will need to monitor granular, high-frequency price data to gauge the impact of shocks on prices and inflation expectations.

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Tomorrow’s costs, today’s prices: why expectations matter for inflation

Boromeus Wanengkirtyo, Ivan Yotzov and Mishel Ghassibe

Can tomorrow’s costs affect firm prices today? When a temporary tariff schedule on imported inputs was announced in March 2019, many UK firms adjusted prices in anticipation – despite the potential cost change being in the future. In a recent working paper, we use firm‑level survey data to estimate ‘intertemporal pass‑through’ (IPT): how much expected future marginal costs move current prices. Consistent with modern macroeconomic theory, we find big differences across firms: those that change prices less often, and expect the shock sooner, responded the most. A model shows this variation across firms makes aggregate inflation more forward‑looking, so announcements of future policies can move inflation today.

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Zooming in: firm-level expectations for economy-wide inflation

Federico Pessina, Maren Froemel and Ivan Yotzov

Understanding inflation expectations is key for monetary policy makers and has been central to the policy debate in recent years. We use data from the Decision Maker Panel (DMP) – an economy-wide UK business survey – to analyse businesses’ expectations about aggregate CPI inflation, and the relationship with their own-price expectations. On average, firms are attentive to current inflation rates, but larger and more productive firms report more accurate perceptions and expectations. In recent years, both one-year and three-year CPI expectations have become more sensitive to inflation perceptions, and three-year CPI expectations have also become more sensitive to one-year expectations. Finally, aggregate dynamics matter for firms’ decisions: CPI expectations are correlated with firms’ own-price expectations and more so for more productive firms.

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Bond financing conditions and economic activity in the UK: aggregate and firm-level evidence

Eduardo Maqui, Nicholas Vause and Márcia Silva-Pereira

In recent decades, the corporate bond market has grown from a relatively niche source of finance for UK corporations to a central pillar alongside bank loans. This transition raises an important question: as with bank credit conditions, have supply conditions in the corporate bond market come to significantly affect UK economic activity? Our recent research suggests the answer is a resounding yes. We show that a measure of corporate bond financing conditions − the Excess Bond Premium (EBP) − not only anticipates macroeconomic outturns in the UK, but also influences investment by UK firms, especially those that are highly leveraged and more reliant on bond finance.

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Monetary policy, state-dependent bank capital requirements and the role of non-bank financial intermediaries

Manuel Gloria and Chiara Punzo

The expansion of non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) is transforming the financial landscape and introducing fresh challenges for financial stability and oversight at the same time as creating opportunities. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, we find that while NBFIs may enhance long-term welfare for households and entrepreneurs in normal conditions, their greater role also heightens vulnerabilities to severe shocks in the financial system. Greater NBFI activity boosts competition in the financial sector, leading to more efficient resource allocation. A working paper detailing these results was recently published.

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A public-private partnership: central banks as a funding backstop

Matthieu Chavaz, David Elliott and Win Monroe

Large-scale provision of long-term funding to banks has become a central bank tool to support credit supply during downturns. However, scholars have worried that allowing banks to rely on public funding could create moral hazard and crowd out private funding. In a recent paper, we address these concerns by showing that central bank and private funding can be complements rather than substitutes. The mere availability of central bank funding improves private wholesale funding conditions, thus supporting lending without central bank funding being used. This ‘equilibrium’ effect makes central bank funding more powerful than previously thought. Finally, the fact that central bank funding comes with strings attached can help to explain why it is an imperfect substitute for private funding.

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Measuring banking resilience to adverse outcomes

Giovanni Covi and Tihana Škrinjarić

The ability of the banking system to absorb shocks and continue providing vital financial services is important because it underpins the smooth functioning of the broader economy. We propose a methodology that serves as a valuable tool for monitoring banking system stability. It quantifies the resilience of the banking system given the prevailing macrofinancial risk environment. The main measure we derive is the probability that one or more banks will fail to meet regulatory capital or liquidity requirements within a given horizon.

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Can regulation drive innovation in finance? Lessons from green mortgage products

Benjamin Guin, Mahmoud Fatouh and Haluk Unal

Regulation has been asserted to be a brake on innovation. Prudential rules impose capital, liquidity and disclosure requirements, as well as stress tests, to strengthen resilience and manage risks – though some view them as potentially limiting financial innovation. Yet recent evidence from the UK mortgage market suggests the opposite: regulation can sometimes catalyse innovation, not suppress it.

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Monitoring trade prices in the wake of trade tensions

Marco Garofalo and Thomas Prayer

The US administration raised US import tariffs in April, reigniting trade tensions. This sparked concerns about cheaper exports being diverted to other markets, potentially lowering global prices. Using detailed product-level data, we build a novel timely indicator to consistently track trade prices across countries. Chinese export prices have risen less than global ones since April and remain below March levels. Prices of other Asian exporters, Canada and Mexico have also grown more slowly than global prices, but to a more limited extent, while export prices for Europe grew faster than global patterns. UK import prices mirror those in Europe, whereas US import prices (excluding tariffs) have declined since March 2025. Our results and future updates are publicly available online.

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Generative AI: degenerative for jobs?

Edward Egan

Headlines warn of a looming ‘jobpocalypse’, but the reality is more complex. Rather than simply causing a wave of job losses, the economic literature suggests generative AI could influence the labour market through several – potentially offsetting – channels: productivity gains, job displacement, new job creation, and compositional shifts. The balance between these effects, rather than displacement alone, will shape AI’s aggregate impact on employment. The latest research suggests that overall effects remain limited so far, but there are some early signs of AI’s impact. I find that, since mid-2022, new online vacancies in the most AI-exposed roles have decreased by more than twice as much as the least exposed group. This highlights the need for ongoing monitoring as AI adoption accelerates.

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