IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jeurec/v20y2022i2p581-625..html

The Side Effects of Safe Asset Creation

Author

Listed:
  • Sushant Acharya
  • Keshav Dogra

Abstract

We present an incomplete markets model to understand the costs and benefits of increasing government debt when an increased demand for safety pushes the natural rate of interest below zero. A higher demand for safe assets causes the zero lower bound (ZLB) to bind, increasing unemployment. Higher government debt satiates the demand for safe assets, raising the natural rate, and restoring full employment. However, this entails permanently lower investment, which reduces welfare, since our economy is dynamically efficient even when the natural rate is negative. Despite this, increasing debt until the ZLB no longer binds raises welfare when alternative instruments are unavailable. Higher inflation targets instead allow for negative real interest rates and achieve full employment without reducing investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Sushant Acharya & Keshav Dogra, 2022. "The Side Effects of Safe Asset Creation," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 581-625.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:20:y:2022:i:2:p:581-625.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvab029
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Siddhartha Biswas & Andrew Hanson & Toan Phan, 2020. "Bubbly Recessions," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 33-70, October.
    2. Sushant Acharya & Julien Bengui & Keshav Dogra & Shu Lin Wee, 2022. "Slow Recoveries and Unemployment Traps: Monetary Policy in a Time of Hysteresis," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(646), pages 2007-2047.
    3. Paul Beaudry & Césaire Meh, 2021. "Monetary Policy, Trends in Real Interest Rates and Depressed Demand," Staff Working Papers 21-27, Bank of Canada.
    4. Ragnar Juelsrud & Plamen Nenov & Fabienne Schneider & Olav Syrstad, 2025. "Money Talks: Transaction Costs, the Value of Convenience, and the Cross-Section of Safe Asset Returns," Staff Working Papers 25-34, Bank of Canada.
    5. Bacchetta, Philippe & Benhima, Kenza & Kalantzis, Yannick, 2020. "Money and capital in a persistent liquidity trap," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 70-87.
    6. Acharya, Sushant & Dogra, Keshav & Singh, Sanjay, 2021. "The Financial Origins of Non-Fundamental Risk," CEPR Discussion Papers 16793, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Andre Harrison & Robert R. Reed, 2024. "Capital flows to developing countries: Implications for monetary policy across the globe," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 839-906, August.
    8. Paul Beaudry & Katsiaryna Kartashova & Césaire A Meh, 2022. "Gazing at r*: A Hysteresis Perspective," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2022-08, Reserve Bank of Australia, revised Dec 2022.
    9. Nicolas Caramp & Sanjay R Singh, 2023. "Bond Premium Cyclicality and Liquidity Traps," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(6), pages 2822-2879.
    10. Paul Beaudry & Katya Kartashova & Césaire Meh, 2023. "Gazing at r-star: A Hysteresis Perspective," Staff Working Papers 23-5, Bank of Canada.
    11. Harrison, Andre & Reed, Robert R., 2023. "International capital flows, liquidity risk, and monetary policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • H6 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt

    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:oup:jeurec:v:20:y:2022:i:2:p:581-625.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jeea .

    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.