Building upon the insight that M1 velocity is the permanent component of nominal interest rates - see Benati (2020) - I propose a novel, and straightforward approach to estimating the natural rate of interest, which is conceptually related to Cochrane's (1994) proposal to estimate the permanent...

Since World War II, permanent interest rate shocks have driven nearly all of the fluctuations of U.S. M1 velocity, which is cointegrated with the short rate, and most of the long-horizon variation in the velocity of M2-M1. Permanent velocity shocks specific to M2-M1, on the other hand, have...