- N21 MPR  3.5 2023 2024 Unemp. - Scenario  Sources: ONS and Bank calculations. In the literature estimates of the policy lag seem to vary quite a bit. In Cloyne and Hurtgen (2016, ‘The macroeconomic effects of monetary policy: a new measure for the United Kingdom’, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics), the authors find that the peak effect of changes in UK monetary policy takes well over two years to come through. Cesa-Bianchi, Thwaites and Vicondoa (2020, ‘Monetary policy transmission in the United Kingdom: a high frequency identification approach’, European Economic Review) provide evidence of material effects after barely a year. 2  4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  4  In other words, there would’ve been no way to control inflation in prices but, at the same time, leave nominal wages and nominal household incomes untouched. It’s sometimes been suggested that, had monetary policy acted to suppress it, consumers might have been protected from this rise in the cost of living. Unfortunately, that’s not true. At a fundamental level this is because monetary policy cannot, over the long run, offset real economic shocks. If structural productivity grows more slowly, for example – as it did after the financial crisis – then, ultimately, real wages will do so as well, no matter what happens to monetary policy.
At a deeper level there are also some signs of a rotation away from goods demand and back towards services. Non-auto durables spending in the US has fallen back a little in the second half of this year. And although trends in the UK are less important in this respect (our share of global goods demand is small), you 6  See “Asian countries are at last abandoning zero-covid strategies”, The Economist Oct 9th 2021 edition. 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  9  can see from Chart 11 that retail spending here has also declined since the spring. I mentioned a moment ago that some of the shifts in spending caused by the pandemic had persisted, even as pandemic itself receded. You can also see in Chart 11 that spending on transport is still a long way short of pre-pandemic levels, not least because many of us are still working from home (to some extent, at least). But total spending on services has nonetheless outgrown that on goods in the second half of this year. Finally, and more generally, we know that, in many instances, tradable goods prices exhibit a significant degree of mean reversion. More often than not, big  Chart 12. Shipping costs have fallen in recent months and forward contracts suggest further material declines Jan 2017 = 100 400  rises are followed not just by slower growth but  Latest  outright declines.