题目：Secular Drivers of the Natural Rate of Interest in the United States （美国自然利率的长期驱动因素）

演讲者：Josef Platzer（IMF）

时间：2021年5月14日（周五上午）10:00-11:30

线上: 腾讯会议

Link：https://meeting.tencent.com/s/wq0PA65fTNYz

会议 ID：793 395 616

文章摘要： We develop a heterogeneous agent, overlapping generations model with non-homothetic preferences that nests several explanations for the decline in the natural rate of interest (Rn) suggested in the literature: demographic change, a slowdown in productivity growth, a rise in income inequality, and public policy. We add out-of-pocket health expenditures to the analysis. The model can account for a  2.2 percentage point (pp) decline in Rn between 1975 and 2015, within the range of empirical estimates. Rising income inequality is an important driver (-0.70 pp), and together with demographic change (-0.71 pp) and the slowdown in productivity growth (-1.0 pp) explains most of the decline. Growing public debt is the major counteracting force (+0.31 pp). Permanent income inequality is of greater importance than inequality due to uninsurable income risk, and matching the degree of non-homotheticity in consumption and savings behavior to empirical estimates is essential for this result. We find a moderate role for out-of-pocket health expenditures (-0.14 pp). We predict that Rn reaches a low of 0.38% by 2030, after which a slow reversal begins. The natural rate stabilizes at 1% over the long run, a low level when compared to the postwar path of Rn implied by the model. This remains true even if we take into account soaring public debt levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fiscal policy can have considerable impact on the level of Rn, and we propose to treat the level of the natural rate as a public policy choice.

主讲人简介：Josef Platzer received a Bachelor’s degree and a Master's degree in Economics from University of Vienna. He obtained a Master’s degree from Brown University in 2016 and a Ph.D. in Economics in 2021. He will start at the International Monetary Fund in fall