IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed017/803.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Safety, Liquidity, and the Natural Rate of Interest

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Giannoni

    (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

  • Domenico Giannone

    (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

  • Andrea Tambalotti

    (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

  • Marco Del Negro

    (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

Abstract

Why are interest rates so low in the Unites States? We nd that they are low mostly because the premium for safety and liquidity has increased since the late 1990s. We reach this conclusion using two complementary perspectives: a exible time series model of trends in nominal rates, Treasury and corporate yields, in ation, and long term expectations, and a medium-scale DSGE model. We discuss the implications of this nding for the natural rate of interest.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Giannoni & Domenico Giannone & Andrea Tambalotti & Marco Del Negro, 2017. "Safety, Liquidity, and the Natural Rate of Interest," 2017 Meeting Papers 803, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed017:803
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2017/paper_803.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2006. "Why Inflation Rose and Fell: Policy-Makers' Beliefs and U. S. Postwar Stabilization Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 867-901.
    2. Benjamin K. Johannsen & Elmar Mertens, 2021. "A Time‐Series Model of Interest Rates with the Effective Lower Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(5), pages 1005-1046, August.
    3. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    4. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Neil R. Mehrotra, 2014. "A Model of Secular Stagnation," NBER Working Papers 20574, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Miles S. Kimball & John G. Fernald & Susanto Basu, 2006. "Are Technology Improvements Contractionary?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1418-1448, December.
    6. Erik Vogt & Michael Fleming & Or Shachar & Tobias Adrian, 2017. "Market Liquidity After the Financial Crisis," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 43-83, November.
    7. Stefan Laséen & Lars E.O. Svensson, 2011. "Anticipated Alternative policy Rate Paths in Plicy Simulations," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 7(3), pages 1-35, September.
    8. Gianluca Benigno & Luca Fornaro, 2018. "Stagnation Traps," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1425-1470.
    9. Francis A. Longstaff & Sanjay Mithal & Eric Neis, 2005. "Corporate Yield Spreads: Default Risk or Liquidity? New Evidence from the Credit Default Swap Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(5), pages 2213-2253, October.
    10. Justiniano, Alejandro & Primiceri, Giorgio E. & Tambalotti, Andrea, 2010. "Investment shocks and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 132-145, March.
    11. Del Negro, Marco & Eusepi, Stefano, 2011. "Fitting observed inflation expectations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 2105-2131.
    12. Michael T. Kiley & John M. Roberts, 2017. "Monetary Policy in a Low Interest Rate World," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(1 (Spring), pages 317-396.
    13. Acharya, Viral V. & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2005. "Asset pricing with liquidity risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 375-410, August.
    14. Andrea Ajello, 2016. "Financial Intermediation, Investment Dynamics, and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2256-2303, August.
    15. Bernanke, B.S., 2011. "International capital flows and the returns to safe assets in the United States 2003-2007," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 15, pages 13-26, February.
    16. Holston, Kathryn & Laubach, Thomas & Williams, John C., 2017. "Measuring the natural rate of interest: International trends and determinants," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(S1), pages 59-75.
    17. Carvalho, Carlos & Ferrero, Andrea & Nechio, Fernanda, 2016. "Demographics and real interest rates: Inspecting the mechanism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 208-226.
    18. Sharon Kozicki & P. A. Tinsley, 2012. "Effective Use of Survey Information in Estimating the Evolution of Expected Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(1), pages 145-169, February.
    19. Mr. Andrea Pescatori & Mr. Jarkko Turunen, 2015. "Lower for Longer: Neutral Rates in the United States," IMF Working Papers 2015/135, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Lukasz Rachel & Thomas Smith, 2015. "Secular Drivers of the Global Real Interest Rate," Discussion Papers 1605, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    21. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2008. "The Time-Varying Volatility of Macroeconomic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 604-641, June.
    22. Michael T. Kiley, 2020. "What Can the Data Tell Us about the Equilibrium Real Interest Rate?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 16(3), pages 181-209, June.
    23. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393, Elsevier.
    24. Richard K. Crump & Stefano Eusepi & Emanuel Moench, 2016. "The term structure of expectations and bond yields," Staff Reports 775, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    25. Ricardo J Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi, 2018. "The Safety Trap," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 223-274.
    26. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2011. "Margin-based Asset Pricing and Deviations from the Law of One Price," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1980-2022.
    27. Neiss, Katharine S. & Nelson, Edward, 2003. "The Real-Interest-Rate Gap As An Inflation Indicator," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 239-262, April.
    28. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Hélène Rey, 2016. "Real Interest Rates, Imbalances and the Curse of Regional Safe Asset Providers at the Zero Lower Bound," NBER Working Papers 22618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2013. "Is There a Trade-Off between Inflation and Output Stabilization?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 1-31, April.
    30. John B. Taylor & Volker Wieland, 2016. "Finding the Equilibrium Real Interest Rate in a Fog of Policy Deviations," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 51(3), pages 147-154, July.
    31. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
    32. Olivier Blanchard & Jordi Galí, 2007. "Real Wage Rigidities and the New Keynesian Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 35-65, February.
    33. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002. "Limited Asset Market Participation and the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 825-853, August.
    34. Thomas Laubach & John C. Williams, 2003. "Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 1063-1070, November.
    35. Marco Del Negro & Marc P. Giannoni & Frank Schorfheide, 2015. "Inflation in the Great Recession and New Keynesian Models," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 168-196, January.
    36. Pablo A. Guerron‐Quintana & Ryo Jinnai, 2022. "On Liquidity Shocks and Asset Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 54(8), pages 2519-2546, December.
    37. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2009. "Global Imbalances and Financial Fragility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 584-588, May.
    38. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2015. "Prior Selection for Vector Autoregressions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(2), pages 436-451, May.
    39. Gorton, Gary & Metrick, Andrew, 2012. "Securitized banking and the run on repo," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(3), pages 425-451.
    40. Adrian, Tobias & Boyarchenko, Nina & Shachar, Or, 2017. "Dealer balance sheets and bond liquidity provision," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 92-109.
    41. Etienne Gagnon & Benjamin K. Johannsen & David López-Salido, 2021. "Understanding the New Normal: The Role of Demographics," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 69(2), pages 357-390, June.
    42. Saki Bigio, 2015. "Endogenous Liquidity and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(6), pages 1883-1927, June.
    43. Frank Smets & Rafael Wouters, 2007. "Shocks and Frictions in US Business Cycles: A Bayesian DSGE Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 586-606, June.
    44. Wei Cui & Sören Radde, 2020. "Search-based Endogenous Asset Liquidity and the Macroeconomy [Why Don’t US Issuers Demand European Fees for IPOs?]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(5), pages 2221-2269.
    45. James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2007. "Why Has U.S. Inflation Become Harder to Forecast?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(s1), pages 3-33, February.
    46. Marc P. Giannoni & Jean Boivin, 2005. "DSGE Models in a Data-Rich Environment," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 431, Society for Computational Economics.
    47. Robert Barsky & Alejandro Justiniano & Leonardo Melosi, 2014. "The Natural Rate of Interest and Its Usefulness for Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 37-43, May.
    48. De Graeve, Ferre, 2008. "The external finance premium and the macroeconomy: US post-WWII evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3415-3440, November.
    49. Anna Cieslak & Pavol Povala, 2015. "Expected Returns in Treasury Bonds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(10), pages 2859-2901.
    50. Wenxin Du & Alexander Tepper & Adrien Verdelhan, 2018. "Deviations from Covered Interest Rate Parity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 915-957, June.
    51. Watson, Mark W., 1986. "Univariate detrending methods with stochastic trends," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-75, July.
    52. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Neil R. Mehrotra & Jacob A. Robbins, 2019. "A Model of Secular Stagnation: Theory and Quantitative Evaluation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-48, January.
    53. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2012. "Credit Spreads and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1692-1720, June.
    54. Fiorella De Fiore & Oreste Tristani, 2011. "Credit and the Natural Rate of Interest," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2‐3), pages 407-440, March.
    55. Marco Del Negro & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2015. "Time Varying Structural Vector Autoregressions and Monetary Policy: A Corrigendum," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(4), pages 1342-1345.
    56. Diego Anzoategui & Diego Comin & Mark Gertler & Joseba Martinez, 2019. "Endogenous Technology Adoption and R&D as Sources of Business Cycle Persistence," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 67-110, July.
    57. Cúrdia, Vasco & Ferrero, Andrea & Ng, Ging Cee & Tambalotti, Andrea, 2015. "Has U.S. monetary policy tracked the efficient interest rate?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 72-83.
    58. James D. Hamilton & Ethan S. Harris & Jan Hatzius & Kenneth D. West, 2016. "The Equilibrium Real Funds Rate: Past, Present, and Future," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(4), pages 660-707, November.
    59. Clark, Todd E. & Doh, Taeyoung, 2014. "Evaluating alternative models of trend inflation," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 426-448.
    60. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    61. Jonathan H. Wright, 2011. "Term Premia and Inflation Uncertainty: Empirical Evidence from an International Panel Dataset," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1514-1534, June.
    62. Barry Eichengreen, 2015. "Secular Stagnation: The Long View," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 66-70, May.
    63. J. Durbin, 2002. "A simple and efficient simulation smoother for state space time series analysis," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 89(3), pages 603-616, August.
    64. Gary B. Gorton, 2016. "The History and Economics of Safe Assets," NBER Working Papers 22210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    65. Mike Anderson & René M. Stulz, 2017. "Is Post-Crisis Bond Liquidity Lower?," NBER Working Papers 23317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    66. Matthew Rognlie & Adrien Auclert, 2016. "Inequality and Aggregate Demand," 2016 Meeting Papers 1353, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    67. John G. Fernald & Robert E. Hall & James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 2017. "The Disappointing Recovery of Output after 2009," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(1 (Spring), pages 1-81.
    68. Pablo Kurlat, 2013. "Lemons Markets and the Transmission of Aggregate Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1463-1489, June.
    69. Edge, Rochelle M. & Kiley, Michael T. & Laforte, Jean-Philippe, 2008. "Natural rate measures in an estimated DSGE model of the U.S. economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 2512-2535, August.
    70. Mattias Villani, 2009. "Steady-state priors for vector autoregressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(4), pages 630-650.
    71. Frank Schorfheide & S. Boragan Aruoba, 2008. "Insights from an Estimated Search-Based Monetary Model with Nominal Rigidities," 2008 Meeting Papers 371, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Del Negro, Marco & Giannone, Domenico & Giannoni, Marc P. & Tambalotti, Andrea, 2019. "Global trends in interest rates," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 248-262.
    2. Brand, Claus & Bielecki, Marcin & Penalver, Adrian, 2018. "The natural rate of interest: estimates, drivers, and challenges to monetary policy JEL Classification: E52, E43," Occasional Paper Series 217, European Central Bank.
    3. Neri, Stefano & Gerali, Andrea, 2019. "Natural rates across the Atlantic," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    4. Michael D. Bauer & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2020. "Interest Rates under Falling Stars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(5), pages 1316-1354, May.
    5. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    6. Marco Del Negro & Gauti Eggertsson & Andrea Ferrero & Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, 2017. "The Great Escape? A Quantitative Evaluation of the Fed's Liquidity Facilities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(3), pages 824-857, March.
    7. Yosuke Okazaki & Nao Sudo, 2018. "Natural Rate of Interest in Japan -- Measuring its size and identifying drivers based on a DSGE model --," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 18-E-6, Bank of Japan.
    8. Holston, Kathryn & Laubach, Thomas & Williams, John C., 2017. "Measuring the natural rate of interest: International trends and determinants," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(S1), pages 59-75.
    9. Marco Del Negro & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2020. "What's Up with the Phillips Curve?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(1 (Spring), pages 301-373.
    10. Enrico Sergio Levrero, 2021. "Estimates of the Natural Rate of Interest and the Stance of Monetary Policies: A Critical Assessment," International Journal of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(1), pages 5-27, February.
    11. Luca Agnello & Vítor Castro & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2023. "Interest rate gaps in an uncertain global context: why “too” low (high) for “so” long?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 539-565, February.
    12. Brand, Claus & Goy, Gavin W & Lemke, Wolfgang, 2020. "Natural rate chimera and bond pricing reality," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224546, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. Maik H. Wolters, 2018. "How the baby boomers' retirement wave distorts model‐based output gap estimates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 680-689, August.
    14. Lindé, J. & Smets, F. & Wouters, R., 2016. "Challenges for Central Banks’ Macro Models," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2185-2262, Elsevier.
    15. Benjamin K. Johannsen & Elmar Mertens, 2021. "A Time‐Series Model of Interest Rates with the Effective Lower Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(5), pages 1005-1046, August.
    16. Robert C. M. Beyer & Lazar Milivojevic, 2023. "Dynamics and synchronization of global equilibrium interest rates," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(28), pages 3195-3214, June.
    17. Böhl, Gregor & Strobel, Felix, 2020. "US business cycle dynamics at the zero lower bound," IMFS Working Paper Series 143, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    18. Krustev, Georgi, 2019. "The natural rate of interest and the financial cycle," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 193-210.
    19. Zhang, Ren & Martínez-García, Enrique & Wynne, Mark A. & Grossman, Valerie, 2021. "Ties that bind: Estimating the natural rate of interest for small open economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    20. Glick, Reuven, 2020. "r* and the global economy," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • C54 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Quantitative Policy Modeling
    • 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

    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:sed017:803. 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.