Charles Bean
Charles Bean is Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Bank of England, having been appointed to this position on 1 October 2000. In addition to his membership of the Monetary Policy Committee, he is responsible for the Monetary Analysis & Statistics Divisions of the Bank. After a spell in HM Treasury (1975–79 & 1981–82), Charles joined the London School of Economics as a lecturer in 1982, becoming Professor of Economics in 1990 and Head of Department in 1999. He was visiting Professor at Stanford University in 1990. He has published widely, in both professional journals and more popular media, on European unemployment, on European Monetary Union, and on macroeconomics generally. He has served on the boards of several academic journals, and was Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies (1986–90). He has also served in a variety of public policy roles, including: as consultant to HM Treasury; as special adviser to both the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons and to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament; and as special adviser to the House of Lords enquiry into the European Central Bank.
Papers Published in World Economics:
Globalisation and Inflation
In this paper, Charles Bean, Executive Director, Chief Economist and member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, discusses the impact of globalisation on the industrialised countries and in particular the inflation process. He explains how globalisation has affected the returns to labour and capital, and the location of production in the world economy. Globalisation has also influenced relative prices, lowering the prices of imported goods but boosting the prices of oil and other commodities. And it may have changed the inflationary process, flattening the trade-off between domestic activity and inflation through a number of channels. Although globalisation has provided a benign backdrop for monetary policy, it poses a number of challenges going forward: the beneficial tailwind has waned and changes in product and labour markets have altered the determination of prices and wages in ways central bankers do not yet fully understand.
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Monetary Policy in an Uncertain World
In this article, Charles Bean, Bank of England Chief Economist and member of
the Monetary Policy Committee, reviews and assesses the three types of
uncertainty which affect monetary policymakers: uncertainty about the data;
uncertainty about the nature and persistence of shocks; and uncertainty about the
structure of the economy. Focusing on uncertainty about the structure of the
economy, he notes the unusual stability of inflation and output growth in the past
decade or so. There are a number of possible explanations, including plain good
luck, structural changes in the economy and improved policymaking. The author
goes on to note that the short-run trade-off between inflation and activity seems
to have flattened as inflation has stabilised at low levels and he attributes this in
part to improved monetary policymaking. He goes on to consider some of the
policy implications of this change.
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