LONDON (MNI) – The Stg75 billion in quantitative easing sanctioned
by the Bank of England Monetary Policy Commmitee at its October meeting
should add around half a percentage point to both growth and inflation,
Deputy Governor Charles Bean told parliament Wednesday.

Bean also said that the MPC was using the estimates made by Bank
staff in recently published research to spell out the likely impact of
the second wave of QE.

Bean said that the research shows that the impact of the first
Stg200 billion bout of QE added approximately 1.5 to 2.0 percentage
points to growth and around 1.5 points to inflation.

He said it was “reasonable to think that it (the second wave) would
have, roughly, equivalent effect, pro rata.”

“We are using that as our guideline (to predict) … the impact
(but) we may find that as we go along the effects are smaller or larger
than the first wave,” Bean said.

Going on the logic that Stg75 billion is roughly a third of Stg200
billion – 37.5% to be precise – Bean said that “that is half a
percent on inflation, relative to what it would otherwise have been, and
somewhat more than half a percent on GDP relative to what it would
otherwise have been.”

Bean was grilled by lawmakers over what the likely impact of QE2 on
jobs, but held back from giving an exact numerical answer.

“Exactly how much that feeds into employment is one of the
uncertainties at the current juncture,” he said.

“Roughly speaking, I would expect if output went up half a percent
employment would go up half a percent,” Bean said before warning that a
combination of low job and productivity growth could confound those
hopes.

“One of the things that we haven’t understood particularly well
through this downturn is the behaviour of productivity,” Bean added.

“Normally what happens in downturns is businesses hoard labour in
the downturn and then when the economy recovers unwind that, so higher
output might not lead to so much employment growth,” he said.

“However, the peculiar thing in the past 18 months or so is that
although productivity fell quite sharply during the downturn, and
therefore we wouldn’t have expected much employment growth, over the
past year and a half or so employment has actually grown surprisingly
strongly and roughly in line with output,” Bean added.

“If that continues to be the case as a result of this QE injection
then there will be more employment,” he said.

–London newsroom 0044 20 7862 7491; email:
drobinson@marketnews.com/wwilkes@marketnews.com

[TOPICS: M$B$$$,M$$BE$]