institute of economic affairs

The Institute of Economic Affairs’ Shadow Monetary Policy Committee

The Shadow Monetary Policy Committee (SMPC) is a group of independent economists drawn from academia, the City and elsewhere, which meets once a quarter at the Institute for Economic Affairs, to discuss the state of the international and British economies.

What is the SMPC?

The inaugural meeting of the SMPC was held in July 1997, immediately after the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee was established and the Committee has met regularly since then. As well as monthly meetings at the IEA, electronic meeting are held once a month. The decisions and minutes of the SMPC are published a few days before the Bank of England’s own interest rate decision each month. The SMPC’s deliberations are covered regularly in The Sunday Times and The Business and other leading newspapers.

SMPC membership

Chairman: David B. Smith, Visiting Professor, University of Derby.

Secretary: Professor Kent Matthews, Julian Hodge Professor of Money and Banking, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University.

IEA representative: Professor Philip Booth, Editorial and Programme Director, IEA and Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at Cass Business School.

Other current members of the Committee are: Professor Patrick Minford (Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University); Professor Tim Congdon (Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics); Professor Gordon Pepper (Lombard Street Research and Cass Business School); Professor Anne Sibert (Birkbeck College); Dr Peter Warburton (Economic Perspectives Ltd); Professor Roger Bootle (Deloitte and Capital Economics Ltd); John Greenwood (AMVESCAP); Professor Peter Spencer (University of York); Dr Andrew Lilico (Europe Economics); Dr Ruth Lea (Director, Centre for Policy Studies and Non-Executive Director, Arbuthnot Banking Group) and Trevor Williams (Lloyds TSB).

Most members are available for press comment and media appearances, subject to other commitments. Please contact Philip Booth, telephone 0207 799 8900 if you would like comment from an SMPC member. Brief biographies of a number of the members appear below:

Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs and Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at Cass Business School. Previously, Philip Booth worked for the Bank of England as an advisor on financial stability issues. He has written widely, including a number of books, on investment, finance, social insurance and pensions as well as on the relationship between Catholic social teaching and economics. He is editor of Economic Affairs and Associate Editor of the Annals of Actuarial Science and the British Actuarial Journal.

Tim Congdon CBE was a member of the Treasury Panel of Independent Forecasters (the so-called “wise men”) between 1992 and 1997, which advised the Chancellor of the Exchequer on economic policy. He founded Lombard Street Research, one of the City of London’s leading economic research consultancies, in 1989, and was its Managing Director from 1989 to 2001 and its Chief Economist from 2001 to 2005. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics. He has published widely on monetary policy. He is currently writing another book on Money in a Modern Economy.

John Greenwood OBE is Chief Economist of INVESCO plc. A graduate of Edinburgh University, he did economic research at Tokyo University and was a visiting research fellow at the Bank of Japan (1970-74). From 1974 he was Chief Economist with GT Management plc. As editor of Asian Monetary Monitor he proposed a currency board scheme for stabilizing the Hong Kong dollar in 1983 that is still in operation today. He has been a member of the Committee on Currency Board Operations of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority since 1998.

Ruth Lea is currently Economic Adviser and Director of Arbuthnot Banking Group and Director of Global Vision. She is also a Governor of the London School of Economics. Ruth is the author of many papers on economic matters and writes regularly for the press. She was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies between 2004 and 2007 and Head of the Policy Unit at the Institute of Directors (IoD) between 1995 and 2003. Prior to the IoD, she was the Economics Editor at ITN. And prior to ITN, she worked in the City for six years. Prior to joining Mitsubishi Bank in 1988, she spent sixteen years in the Civil Service in the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Central Statistical Office and the Civil Service College.

Andrew Lilico is the Managing Director of Europe Economics, an economics consultancy. His key relevant expertises are in: the design of monetary policy frameworks, particularly inflation targeting and price-level targeting (including a number of published articles and projects conducted in emerging markets); cost of capital analysis (particularly in economic regulation); housing market analysis (including projects for the UK government); and the impact of financial regulation (including projects for the European Commission, European Parliament, and Financial Services authority, particularly concerning the impact of EU regulation).

Kent Matthews is the Sir Julian Hodge Professor of Banking and Finance at Cardiff University. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics, Birkbeck and Liverpool University. He has held research posts at the LSE, National Institute of Economic & Social Research and Bank of England. He has held permanent and visiting academic appointments at Liverpool University, University of Leuven, University of Western Ontario, Liverpool John Moores University, Humbolt University Berlin and Cardiff University. He was Principal Economic Forecaster for the Liverpool Macroeconomic Research Group 1979-89 and UK Economist at Lombard Street Research Ltd 1994-95. He has been the Secretary of the SMPC since its establishment.

Patrick Minford CBE has been Professor of Economics, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University since October 1997. Between 1967 and 1976 he held economic positions in the Ministry of Finance, Malawi; Directors' staff, Courtaulds Limited; H M Treasury; H M Treasury's Delegation to Washington, DC; Manchester University; The National Institute for Economic and Social Research. From 1976-1997, Patrick Minford was professor of economics at Liverpool University. He was a member of Monopolies and Mergers Commission 1990-96 and one of the H M Treasury's Panel of Forecasters ('Six Wise Men') 1993-1996. He is author of many books and articles on exchange rates, unemployment, housing and macroeconomics.

David B. Smith studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Essex. During his subsequent career, he has been employed at the Bank of England, the Royal Bank of Scotland, National Westminster Bank, Cambridge Econometrics, London Business School and the London stockbrokers Williams de Broë plc, where he worked as Chief Economist from 1982 to 2006. David is currently a Visiting Professor in Business and Economic Forecasting at the University of Derby, Chairman of the SMPC, and an occasional lecturer at the Cardiff University Business School. He is perhaps best known for his macroeconomic model of the international and UK economies, which is now maintained at his consultancy Beacon Economic Forecasting, and has existed since the early 1980s. This topped the Sunday Times league table of forecasting accuracy for 2006 and came in a respectable fourth (equals) in 2007.

Dr Peter Warburton is director of Economic Perspectives Ltd, a consultancy, and managing director of Halkin Services Ltd, an international risk analysis service. He is economic advisor to Ruffer LLP, an investment management company. He spent fifteen years in the City as economic advisor and UK economist for the investment bank Robert Fleming and at Lehman Brothers. Previously, he was an economic researcher, forecaster and lecturer at the London Business School and what is now the Cass Business School. He published Debt and Delusion in 1999 and edited the IEA Yearbook of Government Economic Performance 2002/03. He is a contributor to the Practical History of Financial Markets course run by the Stewart Ivory Foundation at Edinburgh Business School and teaches occasionally at Cardiff Business School.


Minutes

SMPC minutes are distributed by the IEA and Lombard Street Research and are posted monthly on the IEA website.

Other IEA Work on Monetary Policy

The IEA has contributed to the debate on macro-economic and monetary policy since its inception. Other IEA publications on monetary policy can be found by searching the website by issue or from the IEA publications(e.g. Were 364 Economists All Wrong? or Money and Asset Prices in Boom and Bust) and recommended books(e.g. Issues in Monetary Policy: the relationship between money and financial markets)sections of the website.

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