IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedfwp/2019-18.html

R* and the Global Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Reuven Glick

Abstract

This paper provides a synthesis of explanations for why the natural rate of interest, r*, has fallen over the last several decades. Demographic factors, declining productivity, slower output growth, and increasing inequality likely all have been important factors. Perhaps less recognized is the role of increasing global demand for safe assets, particularly by foreign investors. Suggestive empirical evidence is presented showing that foreign demand for U.S. safe assets, particularly government-provided assets, has increased dramatically, and may now be playing a much larger role in the determination of U.S. interest rates than in the past. In addition, the buildup before the 2007-2009 financial crisis of quasi-government and privately-supplied safe assets, held by both domestic and foreign investors, rendered the financial system more vulnerable to shocks that adversely affected the perceived degree of ?safeness? they provided.

Suggested Citation

  • Reuven Glick, 2019. "R* and the Global Economy," Working Paper Series 2019-18, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2019-18
    DOI: 10.24148/wp2019-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2019-18.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.24148/wp2019-18?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:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Heylen, Freddy & Mareels, Marthe & Van Langenhove, Christophe, 2024. "Long-run perspectives on r-g in OECD countries: An empirical analysis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    2. Thiago Revil T. Ferreira & Samer Shousha, 2020. "Scarcity of Safe Assets and Global Neutral Interest Rates," International Finance Discussion Papers 1293, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Marc Peter Radke & Manuel Rupprecht, 2021. "Household Wealth: Low-Yielding and Poorly Structured?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-40, March.
    4. Philippe Bacchetta & Kenza Benhima & Jean-Paul Renne, 2022. "Understanding Swiss real interest rates in a financially globalized world," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 158(1), pages 1-17, December.
    5. Juselius, Mikael, 2025. "Navigating the sea of natural real interest rate estimates," BoF Economics Review 3/2025, Bank of Finland.
    6. Thiago Revil T. Ferreira & Samer Shousha, 2021. "Supply of Sovereign Safe Assets and Global Interest Rates," International Finance Discussion Papers 1315, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Ferreira, Thiago R.T. & Shousha, Samer, 2023. "Determinants of global neutral interest rates," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    8. Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi & Richard Harrison & Rana Sajedi, 2022. "Decomposing the drivers of Global R," Bank of England working papers 990, Bank of England.
    9. Fu, Buben & Wang, Bin, 2024. "Demographic change and natural interest rate of China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    10. Goto, Eiji, 2023. "International comovement of r∗: A case study of the G7 countries," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • F65 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Finance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedfwp:2019-18. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.