give a concrete example : quantitative easing or qe. when qe was first introduced in 2009, the bank made strenuous efforts to explain this new policy to the wider world. it published speeches and articles. it even did a townhall tour of the uk to explain its actions. the conversations with the public about qe typically took the following form : q : “ is qe money - printing? and, if so, can i have some please? ” bank : “ no. and no. ” q : “ why not? ” bank : “ qe is not printing money. it is the bank of england, through its operations in financial markets, purchasing government securities of a given duration, typically from non - bank financial institutions such as life insurance and pension funds, whose accounts are credited with the proceeds such that the asset purchases are financed through the creation of central bank reserves held on the accounts of commercial banks at the bank of england ”. and that explanation, it was hoped, would provide the general public with the confidence needed to encourage them to spend. you can be the jury in deciding how well this might have been achieved. there was a different explanation, and conversation, with the public that could have been had. it might have gone something like this : q : “ andy, is qe money - printing? ” andy : “ yes. and when you get some, make sure you spend it. ” all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches i fully accept that this would be the wrong side of the over - simplifying line for some people. but if doing so delivers the desired policy outcome – building public confidence to support spending – that may be the better side of the line on which to err. just saying. ( b ) conversation at the bank ’ s first open forum in 2015, gillian guy, chief executive of citizens advice, said something that has stuck with me. in a panel discussion on the role of finance in society, all panellists agreed on the need for improved public understanding of finance. gillian added a crucial qualifier : improved understanding of the public by those in finance was every bit as important as improved public understanding of finance. i think this is bang on and not just in the field of finance. listening is every bit as important as talking when it comes to public policy. the most important reason for this is the most obvious – as policymakers, we stand to learn something. indeed,

q ) has the same impact on the required rate of return on new investment as doubling the chances or scale of the bad outcome. directionally, at least, i think the evidence provides some support for this effect. the sources : decision maker panel and bank calculations. fact that protracted declines in investment were seen only in 2018, some time after the referendum but increasingly close to ( what was expected to be ) the exit date in march 2019, is consistent with it. so too is chart 7. taken from the latest decision maker panel survey, it suggests that the firms who ’ ve cut back the most on their investment spending tend to be those who also expect a relatively early resolution to brexit. firms who think the process will take longer – and obviously those ( in blue ) who don ’ t consider brexit an important factor in their decisions to begin with – have been less aggressive in their response. one implication is that the overall hit to investment is worse than it need be if firms have unrealistic expectations about how rapidly the situation is likely to be resolved. the brexit process – and by that i mean not just the exit agreement but the negotiation of ( and transition to ) future trading agreements as well, with the eu and with other countries – will take the time it takes and i don ’ t pretend to know more than the next person how long that might be. the point here is that, for any given duration of uncertainty, the impact is worse if, along the way, firms continually expect things to be resolved sooner than they actually are. just to be clear, one should not draw the conclusion that a rapid resolution of uncertainty is always desirable, no matter how that ’ s achieved. as i said earlier, if investment has been postponed for fear of what firms see as a bad outcome, guaranteeing precisely that outcome will probably make things worse. it ’ s likely to mean that projects delayed will instead be cancelled. the point is simply that the impact on investment of a given period of uncertainty is worse if, erroneously, firms keep believing that it will end sooner than it ’ s actually likely to. the particular way i ’ ve set things up here means the date at which the news arrives is itself uncertain – it happens with probability q every period. but it ’ s easy enough to model it instead as a fixed, known date in the future. the results are quantitatively a bit different – and marginally less easy to write down – but qualitative