Search Results
Showing results 1 to 3 of approximately 3.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Scarcity of Safe Assets and Global Neutral Interest Rates
We quantitatively evaluate the role of supply and demand of safe assets in determining neutral interest rates. Using an empirical cross-country state-space model, we find that the net supply of sovereign safe assets available to the private sector in secondary markets is an important driver of neutral rates for 11 advanced economies in the period 1970–2018. We also find that the global accumulation of international reserves in sovereign safe assets since the 1990s (the global savings glut) lowered the net supply of these assets and, thus reduced neutral rates by up to 50 basis points in our ...
Working Paper
Supply of Sovereign Safe Assets and Global Interest Rates
We estimate that the supply of sovereign safe assets is a major driver of neutral interest rates--real rates consistent with both economic activity and inflation at their trends. We find this result using an empirical cross-country model with many economic drivers for the neutral rates of 11 advanced economies during the 1960-2019 period. The increasing availability of safe assets after 2008 has pushed up neutral rates, preventing them from continuing their previous decline because of other drivers. We also evaluate the "global savings glut" hypothesis. We estimate that since 1994 the global ...
Journal Article
The global saving glut and the fall in U.S. real interest rates: A 15-year retrospective
The authors revisit Ben Bernanke’s global saving glut (GSG) hypothesis from 2005—which links low long-term real interest rates in the United States to excess saving in a number of non-Western countries, including, but not limited to, China. Using an analytical framework and empirical data, they find that the ability of the GSG hypothesis to explain the fall in long-term real rates between 2002 and 2006 is likely much greater than its ability to account for the further fall in these rates from the Great Recession onward.