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Economic Commentary

Have International Developments Lowered the Neutral Rate?

One way to think about monetary policy is in terms of a neutral federal funds rate, one that exerts neither inflationary nor deflationary pressures. Recent declines in worldwide investment, coupled with the growing globalization of financial markets suggest that the neutral rate may be lower than the current stance of monetary policy and the stage of the business cycle may lead one to believe.

The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series editor is Tasia Hane. This paper and its data are subject to revision; please visit clevelandfed.org for updates.

Suggested Citation

Humpage, Owen F. 2005. “Have International Developments Lowered the Neutral Rate?” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary 12/1/2005.

This work by Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International