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Zero Lower Bound Problem
The Zero Lower Bound (''ZLB'') or Zero Nominal Lower Bound (''ZNLB'') is a macroeconomic problem that occurs when the short-term nominal interest rate is at or near zero, causing a liquidity trap and limiting the central bank's capacity to stimulate economic growth. The root cause of the ''ZLB'' is the issuance of paper currency by governments, effectively guaranteeing a zero nominal interest rate and acting as an interest rate floor. Governments cannot encourage spending by lowering interest rates, because people would simply hold cash instead. Miles Kimball suggested that a modern economy either fully relying on electronic money or defining electronic money as the unit of account could eliminate the ''ZLB''. Even without such measures, however, several central banks are able to reduce interest rates below zero; for example, the Czech National Bank estimates that the lower limit on its interest rate is below -1%. The problem of the ''ZLB'' returned to prominence with Japan's exp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquidity Trap
A liquidity trap is a situation, described in Keynesian economics, in which, "after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference may become virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers holding cash rather than holding a debt ( financial instrument) which yields so low a rate of interest." Keynes, John Maynard (1936) '' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money'', United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 edition, A liquidity trap is caused when people hoard cash because they expect an adverse event such as deflation, insufficient aggregate demand, or war. Among the characteristics of a liquidity trap are interest rates that are close to zero and changes in the money supply that fail to translate into changes in the price level. Krugman, Paul R. (1998)"It's baack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Origin and definition of the term John Maynard Keynes, in his 1936 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helicopter Money
Helicopter money is a proposed unconventional monetary policy, sometimes suggested as an alternative to quantitative easing (QE) when the economy is in a liquidity trap (when interest rates near zero and the economy remains in recession). Although the original idea of helicopter money describes central banks making payments directly to individuals, economists have used the term "helicopter money" to refer to a wide range of different policy ideas, including the "permanent" monetization of budget deficits with the additional element of attempting to shock beliefs about future inflation or nominal GDP growth, in order to change expectations. A second set of policies, closer to the original description of helicopter money, and more innovative in the context of monetary history, involves the central bank making direct transfers to the private sector financed with base money, without the direct involvement of fiscal authorities. This has also been called a citizens' dividend or a di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shadow Rate
The shadow rate is an interest rate in some financial models. It is used to measure the economy when nominal interest rates come close to the zero lower bound. It was created by Fischer Black in his final paper, "Interest Rates as Options". The shadow rate derives from Fischer Black's insight that currency is an option. If someone has money, they can either (1) spend it today or (2) not spend it and have money tomorrow. Thus, when loans would return less money than was initially loaned out, investors will choose to "exercise the option" and not loan their money. Thus, the nominal short-term interest rate is always greater than or equal to zero. In Black's model, the shadow nominal short-term rate is what the nominal short-term rate would be if it was allowed to go below the zero lower bound. When the shadow nominal short-term rate is positive, the nominal short-term rate is equal to the shadow rate. But when the shadow short-term rate is negative — such as during deflation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secular Stagnation
In economics, secular stagnation is a condition when there is negligible or no economic growth in a market-based economy. In this context, the term ''secular'' means long-term (from Latin " saeculum"—century or lifetime), and is used in contrast to ''cyclical'' or ''short-term''. It suggests a change of fundamental dynamics which would play out only in its own time. The concept was originally put forth by Alvin Hansen in 1938. According to '' The Economist'', it was used to "describe what he feared was the fate of the American economy following the Great Depression of the early 1930s: a check to economic progress as investment opportunities were stunted by the closing of the frontier and the collapse of immigration". Warnings of impending secular stagnation have been issued after all deep recessions since the Great Depression, but the hypothesis has remained controversial. Definition The term secular stagnation refers to a market economy with a chronic (secular or long-term) l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zero Interest-rate Policy
Zero interest-rate policy (ZIRP) is a macroeconomic concept describing conditions with a very low nominal interest rate, such as those in contemporary Japan and in the United States from December 2008 through December 2015. ZIRP is considered to be an unconventional monetary policy instrument and can be associated with slow economic growth, deflation and deleverage. Overview Under ZIRP, the central bank maintains a 0% nominal interest rate. The ZIRP is an important milestone in monetary policy because the central bank is typically no longer able to reduce nominal interest rates. ZIRP is very closely related to the problem of a liquidity trap, where nominal interest rates cannot adjust downward at a time when savings exceed investment. However, some economists—such as market monetarists—believe that unconventional monetary policy such as quantitative easing can be effective at the zero lower bound. Others argue that when monetary policy is already used to the max ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative Interest Rate
An interest rate is the amount of interest due per period, as a proportion of the amount lent, deposited, or borrowed (called the principal sum). The total interest on an amount lent or borrowed depends on the principal sum, the interest rate, the compounding frequency, and the length of time over which it is lent, deposited, or borrowed. The annual interest rate is the rate over a period of one year. Other interest rates apply over different periods, such as a month or a day, but they are usually annualized. The interest rate has been characterized as "an index of the preference . . . for a dollar of present ncomeover a dollar of future income." The borrower wants, or needs, to have money sooner rather than later, and is willing to pay a fee—the interest rate—for that privilege. Influencing factors Interest rates vary according to: * the government's directives to the central bank to accomplish the government's goals * the currency of the principal sum lent or borrowed * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative Interest On Excess Reserves
Negative interest on excess reserves is an instrument of unconventional monetary policy applied by central banks to encourage lending by making it costly for commercial banks to hold their excess reserves at central banks so they will lend more readily to the private sector. Such a policy is usually a response to very slow economic growth, deflation, and deleveraging. During economic downturns, central banks often lower interest rates to stimulate growth. Until late in the 20th century, it was thought that rates could not go below zero because banks would hold onto cash instead of paying a fee to deposit it. It turns out this was not quite right. Central banks in Europe and in Japan have demonstrated rates can go negative, and several have pushed them in that direction for the same reason they lowered them to zero in the first place—to provide stimulus and, where inflation is below target, to raise the inflation rate. The notion is that negative rates will provide even more inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willem Buiter
Willem Hendrik Buiter CBE (born 26 September 1949) is an American-British economist. He spent most of his career as an academic, teaching at various universities. More recently, he was Chief Economist at Citigroup. Early life and education Buiter was born in The Hague, Netherlands on 26 September 1949. He is a national of the United States and the United Kingdom. Willem's father, Harm Buiter, was a Dutch economist, international trades union official and politician of the Labour Party (PvdA), who had served as Mayor of Groningen. Buiter went to the European School in Brussels, Belgium from 1962 to 1967, where he obtained his European Baccalaureate. After studying Political and Social Science for one year at the University of Amsterdam from 1967 to 1968, Buiter went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to study Economics and received his B.A. with First-Class Honours in 1971. He was awarded his M.A. in Economics in 1972 and his M.Phil. in Economics in 1973, his fields of concent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monetary Base
In economics, the monetary base (also base money, money base, high-powered money, reserve money, outside money, central bank money or, in the UK, narrow money) in a country is the total amount of money created by the central bank. This includes: * the total currency circulating in the public, * plus the currency that is physically held in the vaults of commercial banks, * plus the commercial banks' reserves held in the central bank. The monetary base should not be confused with the money supply, which consists of the total currency circulating in the public plus certain types of non-bank deposits with commercial banks. Management Open market operations are monetary policy tools which directly expand or contract the monetary base. The monetary base is manipulated during the conduct of monetary policy by a finance ministry or the central bank. These institutions change the monetary base through open market operations: the buying and selling of government bonds. For examp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miles Kimball
Miles Spencer Kimball is an American economist who is currently the Eugene D. Eaton Jr. Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 1987 to 2016, he was professor of economics and research professor of survey research at the University of Michigan. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economics Research. He is a columnist for the online international business magazine ''Quartz'', where his column coauthored with Noah Smith, "There is one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don't" was the second most popular article in 2013. Other popular columns have focused on education, immigration policy, how to get into PhD programs in economics, geopolitics, gay marriage, sexism in economics, the Reinhart and Rogoff controversy and negative interest rates. On his blog,Confessions of a Supply Side Liberal,"he has been an advocate for eliminating the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates in order to make deep negative int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Thomas Sowell and Robert Lucas Jr. Friedman's challenges to what he called "naive Keynesian theory" began with his interpretat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Woodford (economist)
Michael Dean Woodford (born 1955) is an American macroeconomist and monetary theorist who currently teaches at Columbia University. Academic career Woodford holds B.A. from the University of Chicago (1977) and a J.D. from Yale Law School (1980). He completed his Ph.D. in economics at MIT in 1983. He began his teaching career at Columbia, and then taught at Chicago and Princeton before returning to Columbia to accept the John Bates Clark chair in 2004. He was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, which financed his research from 1981 to 1986. In 2007, he was awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize. Theoretical contributions Woodford's early research topics included sunspot equilibria, and imperfect competition. Thereafter he began to work on macroeconomic models with sticky prices; together with Julio Rotemberg he developed one of the first microfounded New Keynesian macroeconomic models. Since then he has used this framework to study many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
