Productivity expert joins board of BoE
BRITISH finance minister Philip Hammond has appointed academic Jonathan Haskel to sit on the Bank of England’s interest-rate setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the UK’s Treasury said yesterday.
Professor Jonathan Haskel, who has just been appointed to the Monetary Policy Committee, is a professor of economics at Imperial College Business School in London.
Prof Haskel will serve a three-year term as an external member of the MPC starting from September 1, it said.
He will replace Ian McCafferty whose term is due to end.
The Treasury said Prof Haskel was an expert on productivity growth, something that has been one of the weak spots in Britain’s economic performance in recent years.
“I am delighted that Pro- fessor Haskel is joining the MPC,” Mr Hammond said in a statement.
“I am confident that his expertise in productivity and innovation will further sharpen the Committee’s understanding of the British economy.”
Since February 2016, Prof Haskel has been a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority, and sat on a panel for Britain’s competition watchdog between 2001 and 2010.
Mr McCafferty, who leaves the BoE at the end of August, is one of the two members of the nine-strong MPC who voted for an interest rate hike in recent months.
The Treasury said it interviewed five candidates for the position, four of them women.
The MPC has only one female member despite efforts by BoE Governor Mark Carney to promote more women to senior roles. (Reuters)