Decision Maker Panel

The DMP was launched by the Bank of England of better understand the uncertainty facing British businesses ahead of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, the University of Nottingham and Stanford University in partnership with the Bank of England have established the Decision Maker Panel (DMP). The project has been running since August 2016. The role of panel members, comprising a large number of UK Chief Financial Officers, is to provide direct insight into business expectations, complementing the more qualitative intelligence gathered through other sources. So far, over 6,500 executives from small, medium and large UK companies, operating in a broad range of industries, have agreed to participate. The panel is designed to be representative of the UK business population, excluding a small number of sectors. It includes questions on topical policy issues and provides valuable insights into companies’ perceptions of the challenges and opportunities facing the UK economy. This project will generate three main types of output. • Policy: The DMP makes a significant contribution to policymaking in the UK. Over the period that the panel has been running, the evidence it collects has been used to brief members of the Monetary Policy Committee individually and collectively. • Research: We are aiming to write a series of research papers from this work. Brexit is in many ways the canonical uncertainty shock – large, partly unexpected, and long-lasting – so studying its impact will be invaluable for economics in general. • Data: In the long term, we plan to make this data available to other researchers with suitable anonymization or confidentiality protocols. Regular summaries of information provided by decision makers will be published on a quarterly basis alongside the Bank of England’s Agents’ reports. Aggregate level data will also be available on the Bank website.