Bank Underground blog by Catherine Schenk: When should policymakers reach for the history books?

Read here GloCoBank PI Catherine Schenk's guest post on the uses of history for central banking policy makers, published on the Bank of England's Bank Underground blog.

Since the Great Financial Crisis started in 2007 there has been renewed interest in using the past as a basis for policy responses in the present, but how useful is history and how is it best used? Certainly, the old chestnut that ‘those who neglect the past are sure to repeat it’ is a valid warning, but how to select the appropriate historical examples and draw the right lessons is a more nuanced exercise that is explored in this post.

The post is one of a series of guest posts by external researchers who presented their research at a ‘History and Policy Making Conference‘ in late 2020 organised by the Bank of England in partnership with the Data Analytics for Finance and Macro Research Centre at King’s Business School and the Qatar Centre for Global Banking and Finance at King’s Business School.