Lumpy Durable Consumption Demand and the Limited Ammunition of Monetary Policy
通过一个耐用品消费的固定成本模型，论证扩张性货币政策会促使家庭提前购买耐用品，导致未来需求减少，从而降低未来的自然利率，解释了后危机时代实际利率持续低迷的现象。
The prevailing neo‐Wicksellian view holds that the central bank's objective is to track the natural rate of interest ( r * ), which itself is largely exogenous to monetary policy. We challenge this view using a fixed‐cost model of durable consumption demand, in which expansionary monetary policy prompts households to accelerate purchases of durable goods. This yields an intertemporal trade‐off in aggregate demand as encouraging households to increase durable holdings today leaves fewer households acquiring durables going forward. Interest rates must be kept low to support demand going forward, so accommodative monetary policy today reduces r * in the future. We show that this mechanism is quantitatively important in explaining the persistently low level of real interest rates and r * after the Great Recession.