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The Rise and Fall of the Natural Interest Rate

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Abstract
We document a rise and fall of the natural interest rate (r*) for several advanced economies, which starts increasing in the 1960’s and peaks around the end of the 1980’s. We reach this conclusion after showing that the Laubach and Williams (2003) model cannot estimate r* accurately when either the IS curve or the Phillips curve is flat. In those empirically relevant situations, a local level specification for the observed interest rate can precisely estimate r*. An estimated Panel ECM suggests that the temporary demographic effect of the young baby-boomers mostly accounts for the rise and fall.

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  • Gabriele Fiorentini & Alessandro Galesi & Gabriel Pérez-Quirós & Enrique Sentana, 2018. "The Rise and Fall of the Natural Interest Rate," Working Papers wp2018_1805, CEMFI.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2018_1805
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Natural rate of interest; Kalman filter; observability; demographics.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models

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