By Shadi Bushra LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England is likely to raise interest rates in the second half of 2015, before unemployment hits the 7 percent threshold at which it has said it would consider tightening monetary policy, a leading British think-tank said on Tuesday. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) forecast that Britain's unemployment rate would not drop below 7 percent until early 2016, longer than most investors think and slightly earlier than the BoE's forecasts. Nonetheless, the central bank could hike interest rates in 2015 in order to keep Britain's economy from overheating, NIESR said in a quarterly report. "There may be a sense that consumer spending and possibly house prices are rising in a way that makes an ultra loose policy unnecessary," NIESR director Jonathan Portes told reporters.
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