IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/germec/v1y2000i1p43-67.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What is the Real Story for Interest Rate Volatility?

Author

Listed:
  • Andreas Hornstein
  • Harald Uhlig

Abstract

What is the source of interest rate volatility? Why do low interest rates precede business cycle booms? Most observers tend to assume that monetary policy is largely responsible for it. Indeed, a standard real business cycle model delivers rather small fluctuations in real interest rates. Here, however, we present two models of the real business cycle variety, in which the fluctuations of real rates are of similar magnitude as in the data, while simultaneously matching salient business cycle facts. The second model also replicates the cyclical behavior of real interest rates. The models build on recent work by Danthine and Donaldson, Jermann, and Boldrin, Christiano and Fisher. We assume that there are workers and capital owners. The first model posits habit formation and adjustment costs to the stock of capital. The second model assumes that it takes time to plan investment and time to build capital.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Hornstein & Harald Uhlig, 2000. "What is the Real Story for Interest Rate Volatility?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(1), pages 43-67, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:germec:v:1:y:2000:i:1:p:43-67
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-0475.00004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0475.00004
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-0475.00004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Business cycle fluctuations in us macroeconomic time series," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 3-64, Elsevier.
    2. Lettau, M. & Uhlig, H.F.H.V.S., 1997. "Preferences, Consumption Smoothing and Risk Premia," Other publications TiSEM 129a8e4c-f593-4f03-b35b-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Danthine, Jean-Pierre & Donaldson, John B. & Mehra, Rajnish, 1992. "The equity premium and the allocation of income risk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 509-532.
    4. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    5. Cecchetti, Stephen G. & Lam, Pok-sang & Mark, Nelson C., 1993. "The equity premium and the risk-free rate : Matching the moments," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 21-45, February.
    6. Jean-Pierre DANTHINE & John B. DONALDSON, 1994. "Asset Pricing Implications of Real Market Frictions," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9504, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    7. John H. Cochrane, 1997. "Where is the market going? Uncertain facts and novel theories," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 21(Nov), pages 3-37.
    8. Krusell, Per & Smith, Anthony A., 1997. "Income And Wealth Heterogeneity, Portfolio Choice, And Equilibrium Asset Returns," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 387-422, June.
    9. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    10. Abel, Andrew B, 1990. "Asset Prices under Habit Formation and Catching Up with the Joneses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 38-42, May.
    11. King, Robert G & Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Money, Prices, Interest Rates and the Business Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 35-53, February.
    12. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "The equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 401-421, November.
    13. Kenneth L. Judd, 1998. "Numerical Methods in Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262100711, December.
    14. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah J, 1996. "Evaluating the Effects of Incomplete Markets on Risk Sharing and Asset Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(3), pages 443-487, June.
    15. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P., 1991. "The consumption of stockholders and nonstockholders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 97-112, March.
    16. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    17. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    18. Rogerson, Richard, 1988. "Indivisible labor, lotteries and equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 3-16, January.
    19. Martin Lettau & Harald Uhlig, 2000. "Can Habit Formation be Reconciled with Business Cycle Facts?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(1), pages 79-99, January.
    20. Lawrence J. Christiano & Michele Boldrin & Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2001. "Habit Persistence, Asset Returns, and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 149-166, March.
    21. Constantinides, George M, 1990. "Habit Formation: A Resolution of the Equity Premium Puzzle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(3), pages 519-543, June.
    22. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Huffman, Gregory W, 1988. "Investment, Capacity Utilization, and the Real Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 402-417, June.
    23. Casey B. Mulligan & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1995. "Adoption of financial technologies: Implications for money demand and monetary policy," Economics Working Papers 134, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    24. Lusardi, Annamaria, 1998. "On the Importance of the Precautionary Saving Motive," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 449-453, May.
    25. Wouter J. Den Haan, 1996. "Understanding Equilibrium Models with a Small and a Large Number of Agents," NBER Working Papers 5792, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Abel, Andrew B., 1999. "Risk premia and term premia in general equilibrium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 3-33, February.
    27. Jermann, Urban J., 1998. "Asset pricing in production economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 257-275, April.
    28. den Haan, Wouter J., 1995. "The term structure of interest rates in real and monetary economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(5-7), pages 909-940.
    29. Ljungqvist, Lars & Uhlig, Harald, 1999. "On Consumption Bunching under Campbell-Cochrane Habit Formation," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 337, Stockholm School of Economics.
    30. Marimon, Ramon & Scott, Andrew (ed.), 1999. "Computational Methods for the Study of Dynamic Economies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198294979, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Santiago Budría, 2008. "An Exploration of Asset Returns in a Production Economy with Relative Habits," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 36(3), pages 261-274, September.
    2. Finn E. Kydland & Peter Rupert & Roman Šustek, 2016. "Housing Dynamics Over The Business Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1149-1177, November.
    3. Willi Semmler, 2011. "Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-642-20680-1, November.
    4. Scheffel, Eric, 2008. "Consumption Velocity in a Cash Costly-Credit Model," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2008/31, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lawrence J. Christiano & Michele Boldrin & Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2001. "Habit Persistence, Asset Returns, and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 149-166, March.
    2. M. Fatih Guvenen, 2003. "A Parsimonious Macroeconomic Model for Asset Pricing: Habit Formation or Cross-sectional Heterogeneity?," RCER Working Papers 499, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    3. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    4. John Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2007. "Risk Based Explanations of the Equity Premium," NBER Working Papers 13220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Kevin E. Beaubrun-Diant & Julien Matheron, 2008. "Rentabilités d'actifs et fluctuations économiques : une perspective d'équilibre général dynamique et stochastique," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 35-63.
    6. Ivan Jaccard, 2010. "Asset Pricing and Housing Supply in a Production Economy," 2010 Meeting Papers 605, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 1-101, July.
    8. Otrok, Christopher, 2001. "On measuring the welfare cost of business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 61-92, February.
    9. James M. Nason & Takashi Kano, 2004. "Business Cycle Implications of Habit Formation," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 175, Society for Computational Economics.
    10. George M. Constantinides, 2006. "Market Organization And The Prices Of Financial Assets," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(s1), pages 1-23, September.
    11. Michele Boldrin & Lawrence J. Christiano & Jonas D.M. Fisher, 1995. "Asset Pricing Lessons for Modeling Business Cycles," NBER Working Papers 5262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Roelof Salomons, 2008. "A Theoretical And Practical Perspective On The Equity Risk Premium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 299-329, April.
    13. George M. Constantinides, 2002. "Rational Asset Prices," NBER Working Papers 8826, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Olivier Allais, 2004. "Local Substitution and Habit Persistence: Matching the Moments of the Equity Premium and the Risk-Free Rate," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(2), pages 265-296, April.
    15. Jaccard Ivan, 2011. "Asset Pricing and Housing Supply in a Production Economy," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-40, October.
    16. Santiago Budría, 2008. "An Exploration of Asset Returns in a Production Economy with Relative Habits," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 36(3), pages 261-274, September.
    17. Longstaff, Francis A. & Piazzesi, Monika, 2004. "Corporate earnings and the equity premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 401-421, December.
    18. Jacobs, Kris, 2000. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1472, Econometric Society.
    19. Longstaff, Francis & Piazzesi, Monika, 2002. "Corporate Earnings and the Equity Premium," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt3qn115m4, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    20. Josep Pijoan-Mas, 2007. "Pricing Risk in Economies with Heterogeneous Agents and Incomplete Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 987-1015, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:germec:v:1:y:2000:i:1:p:43-67. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.