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Quantitative tightening? Britain’s 1980s experiment with overfunding
Bank of England
2026.07.07
This paper presents the first in-depth empirical assessment of the Bank of England’s ‘overfunding’ policy, a neglected historical episode that may offer insights about quantitative tightening. Overfunding ? government bond issuance in excess of fiscal financing needs ? was used as an active monetary policy tool in the early 1980s to slow money growth. Exploiting high frequency issuance announcements and a novel external instrument derived from money market segmentation, I show that overfunding shocks had countervailing effects on asset prices. Excess gilt issuance raised long-term yields, via a portfolio balance channel, but reduced short-term rates, potentially through signalling effects. These offsetting forces led to limited effects on inflation and monetary aggregates. This offers a valuable insight for policymakers now ? that the different channels of quantitative tightening can be exploited to calibrate the aggregate effects of balance sheet unwind.