Natural rates across the Atlantic

Stefano Neri and Andrea Gerali ()

No 1140, Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: The paper estimates a closed-economy medium-scale model for the United States and the euro area to assess the current level of the natural rate of interest and shed light on its drivers. The dynamics of the model are driven by permanent and transitory shocks that bear some connection to the explanations put forward in the literature to explain the secular downward trend in interest rates. The analysis shows that the natural rate has declined, contributing to a lowering of nominal and real rates. Risk premium shocks, a short-cut for changes in agents’ preference for safe assets, have been an important driver in the euro area; in the United States, shocks to the risk premium and to the efficiency of investment, which proxy the functioning of the financial sector, have played a major role. These differences in the importance of the shocks underscore the need to adopt a structural model with a rich stochastic structure, featuring permanent and transitory shocks.

Keywords: natural rate of interest; monetary policy; DSGE model; Bayesian methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 E32 E43 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-mon
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Natural rates across the Atlantic (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1140_17

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