The low nominal interest rate environment is a hotly debated phenomenon among politicians, financial market participants and households. Savers fear the erosion of their retirement savings, while financial supervisors warn of the stability risks caused by declining bank profitability and by the...

What can explain the long-term decline in equilibrium real interest rates? We analyze the importance of three of the most cited drivers; decreasing fertility, decreasing mortality, and a slowdown of technological growth. We do this through the lens of a general-equilibrium, two-country,...

The neutral rate of interest is an important concept and communication tool for central banks. We develop a small open economy model with overlapping generations to study the determinants of the neutral real rate of interest in a small open economy. The model captures domestic factors such as...

We estimate a Heterogeneous-Agent New Keynesian model with sticky household expectations that matches existing microeconomic evidence on marginal propensities to consume and macroeconomic evidence on the impulse response to a monetary policy shock. Our estimated model uncovers a central role for...

This paper investigates how the monetary policy transmission channels change once the economy is in a low interest rate environment. We estimate a nonlinear model for the euro area and its five largest countries over the period 1999q2-2019q1 and allow for the effects of monetary policy shocks to...

With our book Saving and Investment in the Twenty-First Century: The Great Divergence (published as open access), we present a comprehensive theoretical explanation as well as empirical evidence for the phenomenon of low interest rates observed in the OECD countries and China and make various...

Das Umfeld niedriger Zinsen ist weniger auf die Geldpolitik, sondern mehr auf globale Trends in der Investitionsnachfrage und in der Sparneigung sowie einen krisenbedingten Rückgang der Investitionen zurückzuführen. Mittelfristig kann die Überwindung der Bilanzrezession zu höheren...

Background: Saving and investment are two of the most important tools for economic growth. The interest rate has always been considered an important determinant of saving and investment. However, according to Islamic teachings, riba or earning interest on saving or investment is forbidden, and...

Background: Saving and investment are two of the most important tools for economic growth. The interest rate has always been considered an important determinant of saving and investment. However, according to Islamic teachings, riba or earning interest on saving or investment is forbidden, and...

This paper examines the link between interest rates and expenditures, known as the IS-curve. Specifically, we analyse whether the reaction of spending behaviour to monetary policy changes is different in a low compared to a normal interest rate environment. We estimate the nonlinear IS-curve for...