Arthur Grimes

I am delighted to be chosen as recipient of the 2013 NZUK Link Foundation Visiting Professorship. I completed my PhD in the UK at the London School of Economics under an outstanding group of professors including Sir Mervyn King, Charles Goodhart, Charles Bean, Lord Layard and (recent Nobel Prize winner) Christopher Pissarides. All these professors are now prominent policy-makers and academics in London. They influenced my own thinking hugely during my time at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. This visit was the ideal opportunity to analyse and compare experiences in central banking and related policies with these and other leaders in the UK. In September 2013 I launched a series of lectures as part of the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London visiting professorship with a presentation at the Bank of England's conference centre, on inflation targeting. It was a delight to present the lecture in London, the city in which I completed my graduate studies, and especially to present it at the Bank of England, a highly respected institution with very close links to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Inflation targeting, pioneered in New Zealand, is an important topic in monetary economics following the Global Financial Crisis, and the commentary and discussion that followed the lecture showed that there is widespread interest amongst the policy, financial and academic communities in this subject. Similar depth of discussion followed my three remaining lectures on central banking over the next three months.