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Mervyn King (economist)
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Mervyn Allister King (born March 30 1948), is Governor of the Bank of England. He succeeded Sir Edward George
on June 30 2003.
King studied at Wolverhampton Grammar School, King's College, Cambridge (gaining a first class degree in economics in 1969) and St John's College, Cambridge. He also studied at Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar.
He then taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham. He has also been Visiting Professor at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he shared an office with then Assistant Professor Ben Bernanke.
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Mervyn Allister King (born March 30 1948), is Governor of the Bank of England. He succeeded Sir Edward George
on June 30 2003.
King studied at Wolverhampton Grammar School, King's College, Cambridge (gaining a first class degree in economics in 1969) and St John's College, Cambridge. He also studied at Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar.
He then taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham. He has also been Visiting Professor at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he shared an office with then Assistant Professor Ben Bernanke. From October 1984 he was Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.
King joined the Bank in March 1991 as Chief Economist and Executive Director, having been a non-executive director from 1990 to 1991. He was appointed Deputy Governor in 1997, taking up his post on 1 June 1998. In the same year King became a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty.
An ex-officio member of the Bank's interest-rate setting Monetary Policy Committee since its inception in 1997, he is the only person to have taken part in every one of its monthly meetings to date. His voting style is often seen as "hawkish". Before becoming Governor, he regularly voted for tighter monetary policy than his colleagues. That pattern has continued in a more muted way as Governor: most notably, he was outvoted opposing the MPC's August 2005 interest rate cut, and in June 2007 was in the minority by voting for higher rates. King's willingness on occasion to take a minority position is unusual among central bank leaders.
King is noted for his often-repeated ambition to make monetary policy "boring", by which he means that it should be as predictable as possible by continually focusing on achieving a set inflation target. The term "inflation nutter" was also coined in a paper by King.
King is a fan of Aston Villa F.C., and arranged a game between Bank of England employees and ex-Villa players. He also briefly found himself commentating on an Ashes test match for BBC radio Five Live in 2005, whilst being interviewed by Simon Mayo.
The University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary Doctorate in Law in 2006. He is a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.
In a manner exemplifying his commitment to keep inflation in Britain low and stable at the target rate of 2.0%, in 2008 Mr King declined a pay increase from the Bank of England, in the region of £125,000 per annum, which would have brought his final salary up to the £400,000 mark.
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