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.
Continue reading “Bitesize: The rise and fall of interest only mortgages”
Ian Billett and Patrick Schneider.
As time goes to infinity, the probability that a productivity analyst will wonder ‘which sectors are driving these trends?’ goes to one. We present an interactive sectoral productivity tool to help you explore this question without any fuss.
Continue reading “Bitesize: Exploring UK sectoral productivity”
Jihyoung Yi.
FX assets are traded continuously across the globe. The majority of GBP/USD trades, however, are executed during typical trading hours in London and New York (NY). Saravelos and Grover (2016) find that: (i) FX moves during these hours are most highly correlated to the overall daily move; and (ii) there is statistically significant periodicity where GBP tends to depreciate in the London morning and appreciate in the NY afternoon against the US dollar.
Continue reading “Bitesize: Periodicity of GBP/USD trading activities”
Lyndsey Pereira-Brereton.
Like Sooty, the BBC’s yellow bear loved by generations of British children, central banks should wave the ‘magic wand’ of data visualisation over their large, granular or complex data sets, in order to gain further insight into the patterns and relationships contained within them. This blog draws on some examples to highlight how different visualisation techniques help not only the communication of data, but more importantly, how it can aid data exploration, analysis and understanding.
Perttu Korhonen
Good analysis requires new discoveries, creativity, even luck. But innovation is not just a matter of chance — it favours those who are ready for it, which in this case means having the right data. Utilising micro-data to answer new and different questions is a good start, but the next step is to link such item-level information from various sources together. That way we can create analytical opportunities beyond the sum of the parts. In this post I show how a unique linked dataset on the UK housing market reveals that buy-to-let buyers secure a greater discount from the asking price than other buyers.
