IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gla/glaewp/2023_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Selection, Patience and the Interest Rate (version January 2023)

Author

Listed:
  • Radoslaw (Radek) Stefanski
  • Alex Trew

Abstract

The interest rate has been steadily falling for centuries. A process of selection that leads to increasing societal patience is key to explaining this decline. Three observations point to the potential role of this mechanism: patience varies across individuals, patience is inter-generationally persistent, and patience is positively related to fertility. A calibrated dynamic, heterogenous-agent model of fertility permits us to isolate the quantitative contribution of this mechanism. Selection can explain most of the decline in the interest rate over seven centuries, a fact that is robust to a number of model extensions. Quantitative implications are consistent with other facts, such as the steady increase in the investment rate since 1300.

Suggested Citation

  • Radoslaw (Radek) Stefanski & Alex Trew, 2023. "Selection, Patience and the Interest Rate (version January 2023)," Working Papers 2023_01, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    • Handle: RePEc:gla:glaewp:2023_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_910029_smxx.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Doepke, M. & Tertilt, M., 2016. "Families in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1789-1891, Elsevier.
    2. Galor, Oded, 2005. "From Stagnation to Growth: Unified Growth Theory," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 171-293, Elsevier.
    3. Gregory Clark & Neil Cummins & Matthew Curtis, 2020. "Twins Support the Absence of Parity-Dependent Fertility Control in Pretransition Populations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(4), pages 1571-1595, August.
    4. Levy, Moshe, 2015. "An evolutionary explanation for risk aversion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 51-61.
    5. Robson, Arthur J., 1996. "A Biological Basis for Expected and Non-expected Utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 397-424, February.
    6. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    7. Allen M. Featherstone & Timothy G. Baker, 1987. "An Examination of Farm Sector Real Asset Dynamics: 1910–85," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 69(3), pages 532-546.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Radoslaw Stefanski & Alex Trew, 2022. "Selection, Patience, and the Interest Rate (updated 2023)," Working Papers 2022_08, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    2. repec:gla:glaewp:2020-03 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Oded Galor & Stelios Michalopoulos, 2006. "Darwinian Evolution of Entrepreneurial Spirit and the Process of Development," Working Papers 2006-12, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    4. Alogoskoufis, George & Malliaris, A.G. & Stengos, Thanasis, 2023. "The scope and methodology of economic and financial asymmetries," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    5. Manuel Santos Silva & Stephan Klasen, 2021. "Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 581-614, September.
    6. Moshe Levy, 2022. "An evolutionary explanation of the Allais paradox," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(5), pages 1545-1574, November.
    7. Sunha Myong & JungJae Park & Junjian Yi, 2021. "Social Norms and Fertility," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(5), pages 2429-2466.
    8. Luciano Fanti, 2009. "Longevity, fertility and Demographic Transition in an OLG model," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(1), pages 347-356.
    9. Miyake, Yusuke, 2022. "Endogenous childcare costs in R&D based model," MPRA Paper 112489, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Koichi Futagami & Kunihiko Konishi, 2019. "Rising longevity, fertility dynamics, and R&D-based growth," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 591-620, April.
    11. Raouf Boucekkine & Bity Diene & Theophile Azomahou, 2008. "Growth Economics of Epidemics: A Review of the Theory," Mathematical Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 1-26.
    12. Galor, Oded & Michalopoulos, Stelios, 2006. "The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Spirit and the Process of Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 6022, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Roa, María José & Saura, Dulce & Vázquez, Francisco J., 2011. "Economic growth, labor market and demographic patterns," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 81-91, February.
    14. Radoslaw (Radek) Stefanski & Alex Trew, 2021. "Selection, Patience, and the Interest Rate (updated 2023 2023_01)," Working Papers 2020_03, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    15. Hung-Ju Chen, 2010. "Life expectancy, fertility, and educational investment," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(1), pages 37-56, January.
    16. Radoslaw Stefanski & Alex Trew, 2020. "Selection, Patience, and the Interest Rate," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 202002, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews, revised 23 Jul 2021.
    17. Radoslaw (Radek) Stefanski & Alex Trew, 2020. "Patience Breeds Interest: The Rise of Societal Patience and the Fall of the Risk-free Interest Rate," Working Papers 2020-03, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    18. Miyake, Yusuke, 2022. "Endogenous childcare costs in R&D based model," MPRA Paper 112491, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Songjia Fan & Yi Tao & Cong Li, 2022. "Evolutionary rationality of risk preference," Papers 2206.09813, arXiv.org.
    20. Terence C. Burnham, 2016. "Economics and evolutionary mismatch: humans in novel settings do not maximize," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 195-209, October.
    21. Kawalec Paweł, 2020. "The dynamics of theories of economic growth: An impact of Unified Growth Theory," Economics and Business Review, Sciendo, vol. 6(2), pages 19-44, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Interest rates; selection; fertility; patience; heterogenous agents.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gla:glaewp:2023_01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Business School Research Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpglauk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.