Real interest rates have been persistently below historical norms over the past decade, leading economists and policy makers to view the equilibrium real interest rate as likely to be low for some time. Various definitions and approaches to estimating the equilibrium real interest rate are examined, including approaches based on the term structure of interest rates and small macroeconomic models. The individual country approaches common in the literature are extended to allow for global trend and cyclical factors. The analysis finds that global factors dominate the downward trend in the equilibrium interest rate across 13 advanced economies. A corollary of this finding is that the U.S. equilibrium rate can be informed by global developments and is recently lower than estimated in U.S.-only studies. The analysis also highlights how the common global trend confounds empirical assessments of the determinants of movements in the equilibrium rate and the need to better integrate term-structure and macroeconomic approaches.

中文翻译：

---

全球均衡实际利率：概念、估计和挑战

在过去十年中，实际利率一直低于历史标准，导致经济学家和政策制定者认为均衡实际利率可能在一段时间内处于低位。研究了估计均衡实际利率的各种定义和方法，包括基于利率期限结构和小型宏观经济模型的方法。文献中常见的个别国家方法被扩展以考虑全球趋势和周期性因素。分析发现，全球因素主导了 13 个发达经济体均衡利率的下降趋势。这一发现的一个推论是，美国的均衡率可以通过全球发展来了解，并且最近低于仅美国研究的估计。