Money, Banking and Credit

Long time series on money and credit aggregates

Users should first consult the Money and Credit sections of the Millennium of Macroeconomic Data v3.1 (xlsx), which contains data on various money and credit aggregates as well as data on the Bank of England balance sheet. This includes data from the recent study by Nuno Palma who has reconstructed money supply data for England between 1270 and 1870 based on various medieval and early modern benchmark estimates by Nick Mayhew and Martin Allen. From 1870 the historical data on money and credit are based on Capie and Webber (1985) and Sheppard (1971). Headline series from the Millennium dataset are available to view on FRED.

Bank of England Balance sheet since 1696

Several worksheets have been made available on the Bank's balance sheet at an annual and weekly frequency and are available on the Research datasets page at the Bank of England.

• Annual data on the Bank of England Balance Sheet since 1696
• Weekly data on the Bank of England Balance Sheet 1844-2006

Bank of England Operations

For detailed information on the Bank's lender of last resort operations between 1844-1944 please see the worksheet below based on the work of Anson et al. (2017) and available on the Research datasets page at the Bank of England (spreadsheet linked below).

• The Bank of England as Lender of Last Resort Dataset 1844-1914

A volume of statistics from 1890 illustrating the workings of the accounts of the Bank of England has also recently been digitised by the Bank's archive

• Statistics on the working of the Bank of England 1694-1890

Bill Allen has also transcribed Excel sheets covering the Bank's gilt-edged, foreign exchange and gold operations during the 1950s .

• EEA foreign exchange and gold operations 1952 - 59
• Bank of England gilt-edged transactions 1951 - 59

Alain Naef has also recently published historical data from his book An Exchange Rate History of the United Kingdom 1945–1992, which looks in detail at the Bank of England's foreign exchange operations in the post-World War 2 period derived from the records in the Bank of England Archive. Three datasets have been made available:

• Bank of England daily foreign exchange intervention data, 1952-1995
• Data on European central bank interventions between 1986 and 1992
• Data for the book An Exchange Rate History of the United Kingdom, 1945–1992

A spreadsheet on exchange rate intervention between 1977 and 2006 compiled by HMT is also available below:

• UK FX intervention data 1977-2006

Bank and building society balance sheets since 1866

Balance sheets for banks and other financial institutions were collated by David Sheppard published in the Growth and Role of UK Financial Institutions 1880-1962. This has been made available with the kind permission of Professor Sheppard's family. A pdf of the whole volume and a summary spreadsheet of the data on UK banks' balance sheets are available below. Further excel transcriptions covering other data in the volume will be made available soon.

• The Growth and Role of UK Financial Institutions 1880-1962 (pdf)
• Summary of UK Bank Balance Sheets 1880-1966 (xlsx)

The London Clearing Banks

A very useful volume summarising the role of the London Clearing Banks in the late 1970s is available below.  This was based on evidence given by the banks in 1977 to the Committee to Review the Functioning of Financial Institutions (a.k.a. the 'Wilson Committee').

• The London Clearing Banks (172MB)

Bank of England Articles

The Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin started in 1960 and contains many useful articles including a statistical annex up until 1994. The Bank of England also produced numerous methodological articles on money and credit statistics many of which appeared in the Monetary and Financial Statistics publication produced by the Bank. These contain useful summaries and updates of how definitions of the monetary and credit aggregates have changed over time.

• Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin Articles from 1960
• Bank of England Articles on Statistics

The following titles are available to select in the dropdown menus of this section.

• Annual Abstract of Banking Statistics (pending permissions)
• Bank of England Daily Books
• Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin Statistical Annex from 1960 - 1994
• Bank of England Statistical Summary from 1926
• Bank of England Statistical Abstracts from 1970
• Building Society Statistics (pending permissions)

Please select a publication title and year from the boxes below to narrow down the list. Alternatively type in a general search term. The available excel and pdf files are shown in the table. If the publication you are looking for is not in this section please see the complete list of downloadable publications. 

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