Beyond the Liquidity Trap: the Secular Stagnation of Investment

We propose an alternative view of the weak recovery of the U.S. economy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Using a New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and an occasionally binding zero lower bound constraint on nominal interest rates, we find that the slow recovery of the U.S. economy is not driven by weak consumption and depressed asset prices as the standard liquidity trap theory would predict. Instead, the slow recovery is explained by a persistent decline in corporate investment despite favorable economic conditions, as measured by Tobin’s Q, profit rates, and funding costs. Taking into account general equilibrium effects, we show that, if investment had followed its traditional pattern, the economy would have escaped the zero lower bound by the end of 2012.