Caudas pesadas mantêm a taxa de juros baixos

Resumo:



Riskless interest rates fell in the wake of the financial crisis and have remained low. We explore a
simple explanation: This recession was perceived as an extremely unlikely event before 2007.
Observing such an episode led all agents to re-assess macro risk, in particular, the probability of
tail events. Since changes in beliefs endure long after the event itself has passed, perceived tail
risk remains high, generates a demand for riskless, liquid assets, and continues to depress the
riskless rate. We embed this mechanism in a simple production economy with liquidity
constraints and use observable macro data, along with standard econometric tools, to discipline
beliefs about the distribution of aggregate shocks. When agents observe an extreme, adverse
realization, they re-estimate the distribution and attach a higher probability to such events
recurring. As a result, even transitory shocks have persistent effects because, once observed, the
shock stays forever in the agents' data set. We show that our belief revision mechanism can help
explain the persistent nature of the fall in the risk-free rates
Fonte: The Tail that Keeps the Riskless Rate LowJulian Kozlowski, Laura Veldkamp, and Venky VenkateswaranNBER Working Paper No. 24362February 2018