Peter Spencer is Professor of Monetary Economics at Birkbeck College, London and Economic Adviser to the Ernst & Young ITEM Forecasting Club. He started his career as an economic adviser at HM Treasury and has spent 10 years working in the City. His publications include two books on monetary policy and financial regulation, published by the Oxford University Press. His research interests currently include asset pricing models and the term structure, monetary aggregation and the macroeconomic effects of the new technology industries.