Professor Costas Milas PhD (Warwick). Fellow, Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

Prof Costas Milas is an expert on Monetary Policy issues (such as interest rate setting behaviour) related to the UK, US and Eurozone economies, respectively. He works on issues related to the impact of the pandemic on the US and UK economies. Prof Milas is also an expert on debt policies pursued by the Eurozone peripheral economies (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal). He occasionally writes as a business commentator for The Guardian, the Greek Newspapers KATHIMERINI (http://www.kathimerini.gr) and VIMA (http://www.tovima.gr), LSE blog Politics, The Conversation, and the Greek financial sites capital.gr and liberal.gr

I discuss, in my piece for The Conversation, the issue of how to set UK interest rates during pandemic and geopolitically risky times. Available from:
https://theconversation.com/interest-rates-are-likely-to-rise-by-much-less-than-most-people-are-predicting-179326


“Tweets, Google Trends and Sovereign Spreads in the GIIPS”, Oxford Economic Papers (2015). Paper quoted by The Wall Street Journal (https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/06/12/grexit-tweets-deepened-crisis/). I also did a related podcast under the title “Twitter predicts the future” (in 2018) for the University of Liverpool available from: https://twitter.com/livuninews/status/976416016908603392.

On Stock Market Illiquidity and Real-Time GDP Growth”, Journal of International Money and Finance (2014). Quoted by The Financial Times in May 2018. David Smith (Economics Editor, The Sunday Times, January 27, 2013) quotes my research work and assesses its implications for the UK economy. His article, under the title “Economic Outlook: Financial hangover is Britain’s big headache”, notes: “...So why is GDP growth so weak? A paper by economists from Liverpool and Manchester universities, to be presented at the Royal Economic Society’s annual conference in April, argues strongly for a financial rather than a fiscal explanation for the slow recovery. The most striking result from the research, which chimes in with the IMF’s detailed work, is how little difference the coalition’s austerity has made to growth. You cannot raise taxes and cut spending without some impact on growth. The point is that this impact has been small. The economy has grown by roughly 0.5% a year since the coalition took office. In the absence of austerity, it would have grown only a little more strongly, perhaps 0.75%, the research suggests. The unemployment rate would have been a fractional 0.1 points lower annually. Given the risks Britain faced if there had not been a programme to cut the deficit - the danger was of a full-blown fiscal crisis - this is a small price to pay. The paper, The Impact of Stock Market Illiquidity on Real UK GDP Growth, by Chris Florackis, Gianluigi Giorgioni, Alexandros Kostakis and Costas Milas, focuses on the key role of liquidity - the availability of funds in the banking system and elsewhere - in Britain’s recent performance. The drying up of liquidity in 2007, when the financial crisis hit, was a key factor in the severity of the recession. By the same token, it has been a significant constraint on recovery. The Bank of England, responding to the crisis by providing liquidity to the financial system, and through quantitative easing, has tried to offset the liquidity drought and credit crunch. It has not, however, been able to eliminate the financial hangover.” Full details of the article can be found here:
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/Economy/article1202060.ece and here:
http://www.economicsuk.com/blog/001820.html#more

Under the title "Will the Bank of England raise rates next month?" The Guardian (18 April 2018) notes: “Professor Costas Milas of the University of Liverpool suspects that the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee might vote for a rate hike, to 0.75%.... but he also thinks it would be a mistake. He tells us: Despite the drop in inflation, I still suspect MPC members might hike. After all they have done it in the past: From my database, MPC members voted in July 2007 for a hike (to 5.75%) despite CPI inflation ‘dropping like a stone’ by recording three (!) successive falls from 3.1% in March 2007 to 2.8% in April, to 2.5% in May and to 2.4% in June 2007! But, they shouldn’t as my colleague Michael Ellington from Liverpool University and I show in a brand new paper (available from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2882494) that interest rate hikes are more powerful in reducing inflation when inflation exceeds 3%. Far from a done deal next month’s decision!”. Available from:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2018/apr/18/uk-inflation-eurozone-cost-of-living-de-la-rue-imf-global-economy-business-live?page=with:block-5ad7105fe4b0d0cf980b5dd8#block-5ad7105fe4b0d0cf980b5dd8