This paper empirically examines the effect of population growth on real interest rates. Although this effect is well founded in macroeconomic theory, the corresponding empirical results have been rather tenuous. Demographic interest rate theories are typically based on long-term relationships...

We quantify the impact of past and future global demographic change on real interest rates, house prices and household debt in an overlapping generations model. Falling birth and death rates can explain a large part of the fall in world real interest rates and the rise in house prices and...

The demographic transition can affect the equilibrium real interest rate through three channels. An increase in longevity - or expectations thereof - puts downward pressure on the real interest rate, as agents build up their savings in anticipation of a longer retirement period. A reduction in...

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, macroprudential instruments have attracted an increasing amount of attention as potentially the best tools for stabilizing boom-and-bust cycles. This is because, in contrast to short-term interest rates, macroprudential instruments are regarded as...

The aim of this paper is to study the long-run effects of a longevity increase on individual decisions about education and retirement, taking macroeconomic repercussions through endogenous factor prices and the pension system into account. We build a model of a closed economy inhabited by...

This chapter reviews the literature on intergenerational risk sharing (IRS). We explore to what extent and how a market economy with an appropriate institutional setting can replicate a social planner's solution in models with increasing levels of complexity. In particular, we do this for...

The basic asset pricing equation is adapted to include the effects of unemployment, consumers' expectations, the price level and money supply on money market rates and government bond yields. Expected consumption growth is modelled using European unemployment figures and Eurostat Consumer...

A VAR model estimated on U.S. data before and after 1980 documents systematic differences in the response of short- and long-term interest rates, corporate bond spreads and durable spending to news TFP shocks. Interest rates across the maturity spectrum broadly increase in the pre-1980s and...

When agents’ information is imperfect and dispersed, existing measures of macroeconomic uncertainty based on the forecast error variance have two distinct drivers: the variance of the economic shock and the variance of the information dispersion. The former driver increases uncertainty and...

When agents' information is imperfect and dispersed, existing measures of macroeconomic uncertainty based on the forecast error variance have two distinct drivers: the variance of the economic shock and the variance of the information dispersion. The former driver increases uncertainty and...