Real-business-cycle models suggest that an increase in the rate of productivity growth increases the real rate of interest. But economic theory is ambiguous when it comes to the effect of government budget deficits on the real rate of interest. Similarly, little is known about the effect of monetary policy actions on real long-term interest rates. We investigate these questions empirically, using macroeconomic announcement data. We find that the real long-term rate of interest responds positively to surprises in labor productivity growth. However, we do not reject the hypothesis that the real long-term rate of interest does not respond to surprises in the size of the government*s budget deficit (or surplus). Finally, we find no support for the proposition that the Federal Reserve has information about its actions or the state of the real economy that is not in the pubic domain and, hence, priced in the real long-term interest rate.
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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in its series Working Papers with number
2004-019.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991.
"World Real Interest Rates,"
NBER Working Papers
3317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Other versions:
Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1990.
"World Real Interest Rates,"
NBER Chapters,
in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1990, Volume 5, pages 15-74
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]