Operational Independence, Inflation Targeting and UK Monetary Policy

This paper recovers empirically and evaluates the feedback and stance of monetary policy in the United Kingdom throughout the inflation targeting period, implemented since October 1992. Its principal contribution is in comparing two subsamples, before the Bank of England was granted operational independence in May 1997 and after that. Our econometric approach is theoretically motivated by the New Keynesian model and relies on estimating forward-looking Taylor rules via the Generalized Method of Moments from quarterly data. Both final and real-time data, with alternative variable proxies and regression specifications, were used, to find that Taylor rules based on real-time data provide a more reasonable description of British monetary policy. Interestingly, the operational independence subperiod has differed from the pre-independence one - according to our real-time data set - in terms of a weaker response of the Bank of England to inflation but stronger sensitivity to the output gap and a less restrictive stance of monetary policy. Such a reaction would, first of all, characterize the Bank as a flexible inflation targeter, as should be expected by its legal mandate, and not a strict one; secondly, the asymmetry in the feedback function appears justified once the stage in the business cycle is also taken into consideration.