Finance Seminar: Jens Christensen, San Francisco FED

Title: Can Fiscal, AI, or Monetary News Explain the Rise in r∗?

Info about event

Time

Wednesday 17 June 2026,  at 12:15 - 13:15

Location

Universitetsbyen 51, 8000 Aarhus C, Building 1814, Room 227

Organizer

Matthias Lassak and Gyuri Venter

Presenter: Jens Christensen, San Francisco FED

Title: Can Fiscal, AI, or Monetary News Explain the Rise in r∗?

Abstract: Following decades of secular decline, estimates of r∗—the natural or steady-state short-term real interest rate—have risen roughly 1 percentage point since 2020 in many advanced economies, including the United States. The most prominent explanation attributes this reversal to heightened expectations of rising government debt and faster productivity growth from artificial intelligence (AI). However, a high-frequency event study finds that news about fiscal and AI developments does not account for this increase, neither does monetary policy news. While the pre-pandemic persistent shifts in longer-term yields mostly occurred around monetary policy meetings, that regularity has not held in this decade.

Host: Martin Møller Andreasen 

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