Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation
Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-009. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
74 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2017 Last revised: 26 Jul 2018
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Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation
Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation
Date Written: July 20, 2018
Abstract
The widespread emergence of intangible technologies in recent decades may have significantly hurt output growth—even when these technologies replaced considerably less productive tangible technologies—because of low interest rates. After a shift toward intangible capital in production, the corporate sector becomes a net saver because intangible capital has a low collateral value. Firms' ability to purchase intangible capital is impaired by low interest rates because low rates slow down the accumulation of savings and increase the price of capital, worsening capital misallocation. Our model simulations reproduce key trends in the U.S. in the period from 1980 to 2015.
Keywords: Intangible Capital, Borrowing Constraints, Capital Reallocation, Secular Stagnation
JEL Classification: E22, E43, E44
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation