Macro Musings

Paul Schmelzing is an economic historian, a visiting scholar at the Bank of England and a postdoc at the Yale University School of Management. Paul has written an influential new paper on the long history of interest rates titled, "Eight centuries of global real interest rates, R-G, and the ‘suprasecular’ decline, 1311–2018." Specifically, Paul and David discuss the implications of this paper’s findings for secular stagnation theory, Thomas Piketty’s inegalitarian wealth spiral, and for macroeconomic policy more generally.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Paul’s Twitter: @paul_schmelzing Paul’s Harvard profile: https://scholar.harvard.edu/pfschmelzing/bio   Related Links:   * Eight Centuries of Global Real Interest Rates, R-G, and the ‘Suprasecular’ Decline, 1311–2018* by Paul Schmelzing https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2020/eight-centuries-of-global-real-interest-rates-r-g-and-the-suprasecular-decline-1311-2018   David’s blog