Population growth rates have fallen considerably in most developed countries. An important question for monetary policy is whether this has led to a fall in the natural rate of interest. In representative agent models, the response of the natural rate to a fertility shock crucially depends on...

Stylized facts on U.S. output and interest rates have so far proved hard to match with simple DSGE models. I estimate covariances between output, nominal and real interest rate conditional on structural shocks, since such evidence has largely been lacking in previous discussions of the...