I am delighted to be back at the University of Warwick. My thanks to the students who run the Warwick Finance Society and the Economics Society for kindly inviting me. I want to take this occasion to pay tribute to Professor Nick Crafts, who passed away on October 6th, 2023. He was Professor here from 2005-2019 and was rightly described in his obituary in The Times as “the most distinguished British economic historian of his generation” and in the Financial Times as writing “the definitive account of Britain’s Industrial Revolution”.1 He was brilliant, generous and always good-natured. An example to us all. My ... (full story)

We apply the Bernanke and Blanchard (2023) model of inflation to UK quarterly data from 1990 to 2023. The model explains wage growth, price inflation, and inflation expectations (short- and long-run) as functions of labour market tightness, shocks to energy and food prices, shortages, and productivity. Labour market tightness is measured by the vacancies-tounemployment (V/U) ratio. The estimated equations are similar to those for the US, although the UK appears to have stickier wage and price inflation, and more persistent effects of food price shocks. UK inflation in 2021 is explained by shortages and energy price ... (full story)