Event Details
Date & Time
March 28, 2025
9:15am – 3:00pm
March 28, 2025
9:15am – 3:00pm
Location
This will be a hybrid event, with most panelists participating in-person and the general audience attending virtually.
This will be a hybrid event, with most panelists participating in-person and the general audience attending virtually.
Audience
The conference is open to the public, academics, practitioners, and policymakers virtually. There will be opportunities for Q&A during the event.
The conference is open to the public, academics, practitioners, and policymakers virtually. There will be opportunities for Q&A during the event.
Media
This event is open to the media both virtually and in person. All remarks are on the record and a recording will be made available afterward. Media who wish to attend virtually or in person must register by contacting Mariah Measey at mariah.measey@ny.frb.org.
This event is open to the media both virtually and in person. All remarks are on the record and a recording will be made available afterward. Media who wish to attend virtually or in person must register by contacting Mariah Measey at mariah.measey@ny.frb.org.
Conference Organizers
Ozge Akinci
Marco Del Negro
Keshav Dogra
Jake Weber
Ozge Akinci
Marco Del Negro
Keshav Dogra
Jake Weber
Agenda
Agenda
| 9:15am-9:20am | Introduction: Marco Del Negro (New York Fed) |
| 9:20am-10:20am | Session 1: Real and Financial Drivers of R-Star—Part 1 How important are changes in productivity growth, demographics, or investment demand for determining the long-run natural real rate of interest, r-star? Accordingly, how do you expect recent developments to bear on the natural rate going forward, including but not limited to (i) the ongoing maturation of AI as a technology, (ii) changes in population growth and immigration, (iii) climate risk, (iv) the Green Transition, and (v) changes in public investment (e.g., due to geopolitical risk and defense spending)? Overall, in your view is the balance of risk tilted more toward r-star being higher over the next decade than it was in the decade before the pandemic? Chair: Jacob Weber (New York Fed) Panelists: Lukasz Rachel (University College London), Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard) |
| 10:25am-11:25pm | Session 2: Real and Financial Drivers of R-Star—Part 2 Is the convenience yield for safe and liquid assets an important driver of r-star? If so, what are your thoughts on its recent evolution, and where do you expect it to be over the next decade? Relatedly, research has shown that the supply of safe and liquid assets, and in particular of government debt, is an important driver of the convenience yield—do you think it is also an important driver of r-star? How do taxation and fiscal policy affect long-run r-star more broadly? How, if at all, do the distribution of wealth and income and the differential borrowing and saving behavior of poor and rich households affect r-star? Chair: Marco Del Negro (New York Fed) Panelists: Arvind Krishnamurthy (Stanford), Ludwig Straub (Harvard) |
| 11:40am-1:00pm | Session 3: International Dimensions of R-Star Is the degree of financial market integration such that there is a “global” r-star? And if so, who is the marginal investor determining it? What are the determinants of global r-star and how should they be measured empirically? What is the relative importance of global and local factors in the determination of r-star in different countries? Some have argued that post-pandemic long-run r-star has remained low in some advanced economies, such as Europe, but has risen in the United States. If this divergent pattern exists, can it be sustained? How large is the impact of higher global debt-to-GDP ratios on the longer-run value of r-star? Chair: Ozge Akinci (New York Fed) Ricardo Caballero (MIT), Fernanda Nechio (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), Maurice Obstfeld (University of California, Berkeley) |
| 1:00pm-2:00pm | Lunch |
| 2:00pm-3:00pm | Session 4: Is R-Star a Good Guide for Policy? Is r-star as conventionally defined and measured in models such as Laubach-Williams or New Keynesian DSGE models a good guide for policy? Should the Federal Reserve's long-run target for the nominal interest rate move one-for-one with its estimate of r-star? Does the conventional definition neglect important aspects of the macroeconomy, in particular financial stability considerations? Could r-star and its determinants be endogenous to the conduct of monetary policy? In most models, r-star estimates are highly uncertain—given that, and given model uncertainty, do you think r-star estimates are still useful to policymakers? How accurately can we detect shifts in r-star in real time, and how much weight should we put on recent economic performance in assessing whether r-star has shifted? Chair: Keshav Dogra (New York Fed) Panelists: Paul Beaudry (University of British Columbia), Michael Woodford (Columbia) |
