IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed016/1429.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Beyond the Liquidity Trap: the Secular Stagnation of Investment

Author

Listed:
  • Virgiliu Midrigan

    (New York University)

  • Thomas Philippon

    (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY)

  • Callum Jones

    (New York University)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Virgiliu Midrigan & Thomas Philippon & Callum Jones, 2016. "Beyond the Liquidity Trap: the Secular Stagnation of Investment," 2016 Meeting Papers 1429, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed016:1429
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2016/paper_1429.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas, Robert E, Jr & Prescott, Edward C, 1971. "Investment Under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 659-681, September.
    2. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Gordon, Grey & Guerrón-Quintana, Pablo & Rubio-Ramírez, Juan F., 2015. "Nonlinear adventures at the zero lower bound," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 182-204.
    3. Robert E. Hall, 2001. "The Stock Market and Capital Accumulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1185-1202, December.
    4. Eric T. Swanson & John C. Williams, 2014. "Measuring the Effect of the Zero Lower Bound on Medium- and Longer-Term Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3154-3185, October.
    5. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Neil R. Mehrotra, 2014. "A Model of Secular Stagnation," NBER Working Papers 20574, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Johannes Wieland, 2012. "The Optimal Inflation Rate in New Keynesian Models: Should Central Banks Raise Their Inflation Targets in Light of the Zero Lower Bound?," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(4), pages 1371-1406.
    7. Thomas Philippon, 2009. "The Bond Market's q," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(3), pages 1011-1056.
    8. Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "When Is the Government Spending Multiplier Large?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 78-121.
    9. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Johannes Wieland, 2012. "The Optimal Inflation Rate in New Keynesian Models: Should Central Banks Raise Their Inflation Targets in Light of the Zero Lower Bound?," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(4), pages 1371-1406.
    10. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    11. Paul R. Krugman, 1998. "It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 137-206.
    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. Marx, Magali & Mojon, Benoît & Velde, François R., 2021. "Why have interest rates fallen far below the return on capital?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(S), pages 57-76.
    2. Ricardo J Caballero & Alp Simsek, 2020. "A Risk-Centric Model of Demand Recessions and Speculation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 135(3), pages 1493-1566.
    3. Nicolo Maffei-Faccioli, 2020. "Identifying the Sources of the Slowdown in Growth: Demand vs. Supply," 2020 Papers pma2978, Job Market Papers.
    4. Olmstead-Rumsey, Jane, 2019. "Market Concentration and the Productivity Slowdown," MPRA Paper 93260, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2017. "Declining Competition and Investment in the U.S," NBER Working Papers 23583, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Nicolò Maffei-Faccioli, 2021. "Identifying the sources of the slowdown in growth: Demand vs. supply," Working Paper 2021/9, Norges Bank.
    7. Massimo Del Gatto & Fadi Hassan & Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Fabiano Schivardi, 2019. "Company Profits in Italy," European Economy - Discussion Papers 093, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    8. Aquilante, Tommaso & Chowla, Shiv & Dacic, Nikola & Haldane, Andrew & Masolo, Riccardo & Schneider, Patrick & Seneca, Martin & Tatomir, Srdan, 2019. "Market power and monetary policy," Bank of England working papers 798, Bank of England.

    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. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi, 2017. "Escaping the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1030-1058, April.
    2. Benjamin D. Keen & Alexander W. Richter & Nathaniel A. Throckmorton, 2017. "Forward Guidance And The State Of The Economy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1593-1624, October.
    3. Philippe Andrade & Gaetano Gaballo & Eric Mengus & Benoît Mojon, 2019. "Forward Guidance and Heterogeneous Beliefs," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 1-29, July.
    4. Taisuke Nakata & Sebastian Schmidt & Timothy Hills, 2016. "The Risky Steady State and the Interest Rate Lower Bound," 2016 Meeting Papers 39, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Aleksandra Praščević & Milutin Ješić, 2019. "Modeling Macroeconomic Policymakers’ Interactions under Zero Lower Bound Environment: The New Keynesian Theoretical Approach," Journal of Central Banking Theory and Practice, Central bank of Montenegro, vol. 8(1), pages 5-38.
    6. Nakata, Taisuke, 2016. "Optimal fiscal and monetary policy with occasionally binding zero bound constraints," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 220-240.
    7. Jonathan Swarbrick, 2021. "Occasionally Binding Constraints in Large Models: A Review of Solution Methods," Discussion Papers 2021-5, Bank of Canada.
    8. William T. Gavin & Benjamin D. Keen & Alexander W. Richter & Nathaniel A. Throckmorton, 2013. "Global Dynamics at the Zero Lower Bound," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2013-17, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
    9. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Joël Marbet & Galo Nuño & Omar Rachedi, 2023. "Inequality and the Zero Lower Bound," NBER Working Papers 31282, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Bianchi, Francesco & Melosi, Leonardo, 2019. "The dire effects of the lack of monetary and fiscal coordination," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-22.
    11. Roberto M. Billi & Jordi Galí, 2020. "Gains from Wage Flexibility and the Zero Lower Bound," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(6), pages 1239-1261, December.
    12. Nakata, Taisuke & Schmidt, Sebastian, 2019. "Conservatism and liquidity traps," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 37-47.
    13. Alan Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Jakob de Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2017. "Necessity as the mother of invention: monetary policy after the crisis," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 32(92), pages 707-755.
    14. Gavin, William T. & Keen, Benjamin D. & Richter, Alexander W. & Throckmorton, Nathaniel A., 2015. "The zero lower bound, the dual mandate, and unconventional dynamics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 14-38.
    15. Michau, Jean-Baptiste, 2019. "Monetary and fiscal policy in a liquidity trap with inflation persistence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 1-28.
    16. Battistini, Niccolò & Callegari, Giovanni & Zavalloni, Luca, 2019. "Dynamic fiscal limits and monetary-fiscal policy interactions," Working Paper Series 2268, European Central Bank.
    17. Hills, Timothy S. & Nakata, Taisuke & Schmidt, Sebastian, 2019. "Effective lower bound risk," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    18. Matthew Rognlie & Andrei Shleifer & Alp Simsek, 2018. "Investment Hangover and the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 113-153, April.
    19. Barthélemy, Jean & Mengus, Eric, 2018. "The signaling effect of raising inflation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 488-516.
    20. Corsetti, Giancarlo & Dedola, Luca & Jarociński, Marek & Maćkowiak, Bartosz & Schmidt, Sebastian, 2019. "Macroeconomic stabilization, monetary-fiscal interactions, and Europe's monetary union," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 22-33.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed016:1429. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.