Public attitudes to monetary policy

This article examines the latest results from the Bank/GfK NOP survey concerning households’ awareness and understanding of monetary policy, and their satisfaction with the way the Bank is conducting monetary policy. Results from the latest surveys indicate that public awareness of the policy framework has remained broadly constant over the past year at a reasonably high level. Satisfaction with the way the Bank sets interest rates in order to control inflation remains much lower than before the financial crisis. While remaining positive over the past year, net satisfaction fell to a series low in 2012 Q3, before recovering a little in subsequent surveys. The extent of satisfaction with the Bank has moved closely with changes in consumer confidence, which in turn is linked to a range of macroeconomic variables including GDP growth, inflation and unemployment.