The Rise and Fall of the Natural Interest Rate

Abstract

We document a rise and fall of the natural interest rate (r*) for several advanced economies, which starts increasing in the 1960’s and peaks around the end of the 1980’s. We reach this conclusion after showing that the Laubach and Williams (2003) model cannot estimate r* accurately when either the IS curve or the Phillips curve is fl at. In those empirically relevant situations, a local level specifi cation for the observed interest rate can precisely estimate r*. An estimated Panel ECM suggests that the temporary demographic effect of the young baby-boomers mostly accounts for the rise and fall.

Keywords: natural rate of interest, Kalman fi lter, observability, demographics.

JEL Classification: E43, E52, C32.