Lucas Papademos: Globalisation and central bank policies Speech by Mr Lucas Papademos, Vice President of the European Central Bank, at the Bridge Forum Dialogue, Luxembourg, 22 January 2008. * I. *  *  Introduction  For years now, globalisation has been, and continues to be, a buzzword in the public debate. Its persistent significance is certainly also due to the fact that it is such a multi-faceted phenomenon which has yet to be fully understood and assessed. Globalisation encompasses a broad range of aspects – economic, social, political, cultural and intellectual – and many of these are of relevance to public policy. Even though public discourse often focuses on the economic consequences of globalisation – the integration of markets and its associated distributional effects – globalisation is about more than the free exchange of goods, services and capital on global markets. It is also about an unprecedented opportunity to exchange knowledge and ideas across the globe. And the Bridge Forum Dialogue here in Luxembourg provides an excellent platform to see this intellectual facet of globalisation in action. I should like to thank Governor Mersch, the President of the Forum, for having invited me, and I am looking forward to an enriching debate with my fellow panellists and the audience on the theme of this year’s event: “Globalisation: how to manage it?” Exploiting my professional comparative advantage, I will elaborate on the central bank perspective.
With the arrival of the nine-person Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in 1997, the number of published speeches increased further from around 13 per year in the nineties to around 34 in the noughties. Accompanying these speeches were published minutes of MPC meetings. 14 15 16  See Brunner (1981) and Goodfriend (1986). As described by King (2000). Capie (2010). 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  In 2013, the Bank began issuing so-called “forward guidance” on its policy actions. 17  In 2014, following a  review by David Stockton, the Bank began publishing forecasts for a wider set of variables. 18  And from  2015, following a review by Kevin Warsh, the Bank agreed to publish full transcripts of MPC policy meetings (Table 1). 19  These publications do not capture the entirety of the Bank’s engagement strategy. In 2016 alone, the Bank appeared before Parliament on 22 separate occasions. Senior Bank officials made around 60 visits to the Bank’s regional agencies across the UK. Bank officials visited nearly 5,000 companies and charities. The Bank ran a schools competition, involving over 250 schools. And it hosted a Future Forum, at which it engaged openly with a broad cross-section of the public on a wide range of issues. These step changes in transparency have been broadly mirrored across a range of other central banks.