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Agents’ Special Surveys since the start of the financial crisis
Abstract
This article looks at the Agents’ Special Surveys that have been commissioned by the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) since the start of the financial crisis. Through the prism of the Special Surveys, the article discusses some key features of the recession and the puzzles faced by policymakers. And it describes how the Special Surveys have been used by the MPC to try to shed light on these issues — some of which continue to be a significant source of uncertainty today.
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Each month, the Bank's twelve Agents make quantitative assessments of economic conditions as seen from their respective countries and regions. These scores provide numerical measures of the intelligence that the Agents gather from month to month, and cover some areas of the economy where there are no official statistics. The scores are also timely and some have a high correlation with subsequently published ONS data. As such, they can be useful indicators of the current economic conjuncture. This article examines the scores that have been used in the regular MPC process since 1997. From January 2006, the scores will be published on the Bank's internet site.
This article describes the work of the Bank's regional November 1997 Quarterly Bulletin. It outlines, in work of the Monetary Policy Committee.
The Bank's Agents collect economic intelligence from the business community around the United Kingdom, enriching the range of information available to the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). This intelligence is largely qualitative, and provides timely insights into economic conditions and behaviour not available from published data alone. While the greatest value from their intelligence gathering is such insight, Agents also make quantitative judgements about economic conditions in the form of a series of scores. With a decade of scores now available, this article reviews their properties and usefulness. The scores are found to be well correlated with many official data series, with correlations tending to increase through time. Some scores are also useful in predicting revisions to official data, or capturing major turning points in economic activity. Consequently, they make a valuable addition to the broad suite of information reviewed by the MPC in its policy deliberations.