Will Abel
UK GDP growth slowed sharply at the beginning of this year. Over the same period, Britons suffered through unseasonably cold weather, popularly known as “The Beast from the East”. Are the two related?
Tag Archives: Bitesize
Bitesize: The past decade’s productivity growth in historical context
John Lewis
How poor has the past decade of productivity growth been by historical standards? Exceptionally.
Filed under Bitesize, Economic History, Macroeconomics
Bitesize: UK real interest rates over the past three centuries
John Lewis
How low are UK real interest rates by historical standards? Using the Bank’s Millennium of Macroeconomic Data, I compute real bank rate, mortgage rates, and 10-year government bond yields over time.
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Filed under Bitesize, Economic History, Financial Markets, Macroeconomics
Bitesize: Risk-weight watchers: a probe into UK banks’ capital ratios
James Cui and Marcus Pettersson
Shortcomings of the Basel capital framework became apparent in the 2007-8 crisis. One much reviewed and debated issue is that capital ratios can be increased by changes to methods and models for calculating RWA (M&M changes hereinafter) rather than by changes to balance sheets. How have UK banks fared in this respect?
Filed under Bitesize, Financial Stability
Bitesize: The rise and fall of interest only mortgages
Sachin Galaiya
The interest-only product has undergone tremendous evolution, from its mass-market glory days in the run-up to the crisis, to its rebirth as a niche product. However, since reaching a low-point in 2016, the interest-only market is starting to show signs of life again as lenders re-enter the market.
Filed under Financial Stability, Housing market, Microprudential Regulation
Bitesize: Flourishing FinTech
Aidan Saggers and Chiranjit Chakraborty
Investment in the Financial Technology (FinTech) industry has increased rapidly post crisis and globalisation is apparent with many investors funding companies far from their own physical locations. From Crunchbase data we gathered all the venture capital investments in FinTech start-up firms from 2010 to 2014 and created network diagrams for each year.
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Bitesize: Are leasehold houses really a thing?
Andrew Blake
The so-called ground rent scandal has prompted the launch of a government consultation into leasehold reform. One surprise is just how widespread is the practice of selling newly built houses as leasehold, a practice that seems to have been growing over time. Given that the Land Registry publishes details of all housing transaction since 1995, plotting changes in the pattern of leasehold versus freehold for each type of newly built home is easy.
Bitesize: The very volatile value of cryptocurrencies
John Lewis
Proponents of private cryptocurrencies argue they are a better store of value than traditional “fiat” currency. But even if a cryptocurrency’s value cannot be inflated away by large supply increases, that doesn’t automatically mean its value is stable in terms of ability to buy goods and services.
Filed under Currency, Financial Markets
Bitesize: How trendy are retail sales?
Matthew Swannell
Since the turn of the year UK retail sales data have been grabbing headlines. Sharp contractions have been attributed to rising prices. That is no doubt part of the argument. But is there more to it?
Filed under Macroeconomics
Bitesize: Blink and you’ve missed it: French government bond ‘mini flash’
Gosia Goralczyk
On 16 February 2017, following the release of the ECB’s January meeting accounts, French government bond (OAT) futures experienced a so-called ‘mini flash’, with yields falling 11bps within 85 seconds, in a period of significant illiquidity, before retracing most of the move within eight minutes.
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Filed under Financial Markets, Financial Stability
