Date: 29 March 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has often been compared with a war. Rosa Lastra (Queen Mary University of London) welcomed William Allen to give a presentation comparing the financing of government support during the pandemic with the financing of the two world wars of the twentieth century, and in the light of those experiences, discusses what the economic and financial after-effects of the pandemic might be.
William Allen is a visitor at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. He was educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. He worked at the Bank of England from 1972 – 2004. He was seconded to the Bank for International Settlements from 1978 – 80, and was a member of the EU Monetary Committee from 1994-98.
Since 2004, he has worked in the private sector and for the International Monetary Fund. He was a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee from 2010 - 17, and to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in 2012. He has written extensively on monetary subjects including International Liquidity and the Financial Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Monetary Policy and Financial Repression in Britain 1951 – 59 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and The Bank of England and the Government Debt: Operations in the gilt-edged market, 1928 – 1972 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and numerous published articles.