John Muellbauer (Official Fellow and Professor of Economics) became Director of Graduate Studies in Economics for one year from 1 January, three days after the birth of his daughter, Amy Natalie. With the transition to the new Economics Department and the (delayed) move to the new Economics building, 1999 was a year of administrative upheaval. Nevertheless, a number of papers were completed. The paper with Duncan Maclennan and Mark Stephens on asymmetries in the monetary policy transmission process in Europe received widespread attention and was presented at the Bank of England, HM Treasury, the European Central Bank, at an international conference in Florence as well as in Oxford. It has important implications for the feasibility of UK entry into the Eurozone. With Janine Aron, he completed two papers which brought to four the number of presentations at central banks this year: on saving in South Africa, given at the Reserve Bank in Pretoria, and on monetary transmission and policy rules in South Africa given at an international conference at the Central Bank of Chile in Santiago. One of the policy recommendations of the saving paper appears already to have been adopted by the Reserve Bank.

With Gavin Cameron, he completed two papers. One concerns the determination between 1973 and 1995 of regional earnings differentials in Britain using data from the New Earnings Survey. New light is thrown on the issue of the relationship between earnings and unemployment and on effects on earnings of housing market developments. The other paper argues that the UK Regional Accounts suffered from major distortions between the late 1970’s and the early 1990’s. This had implications for European Commission funding for the UK’s poorer regions as well as for economic researchers and policy makers using these data. Research continued on other aspects of the ESRC grant with David Hendry (Modelling Non-stationary in Economic Time Series). With Dr Janine Aron of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, two years of funding to study monetary policy in South Africa was received from Claire Short’s Department for International Development.

Publications

(with Duncan Maclennan and Mark Stephens) ‘Asymmetries in Housing and Financial Market Institutions and EMU’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 14, 1998.

(with Janine Aron) ‘Personal and Corporate Saving in South Africa: A Review of some recent Empirical Work’, CREFSA (LSE Centre for Research into Economics and Finance in Southern Africa) Quarterly Review, 4, 1998.