Ladies and gentlemen
I am delighted to be here today in Seoul to address such a distinguished audience. I would like to thank Governor Rhee for inviting me to give this keynote speech.
The topic of this year's Bank of Korea International Conference – 'The Evolution of the Natural Interest Rate and Its Implications for the Global Economy' – could not have come at a better time. Monetary tightening over the past two years has lifted policy rates and longer-term interest rates from their historical lows. There are reasons to believe that some of the structural drivers of real interest rates have also changed direction in recent years. A lively debate has emerged on whether real interest rates will return to their pre-pandemic levels, or whether they will remain higher because the natural rate of interest, r*, has increased.
Over the past years, r* has become an important reference point for monetary policy. The difference between the real interest rate and r* gives a measure of a central bank's monetary policy stance. Therefore, r* estimates help in evaluating different monetary policy options. However, the measurement of r* is subject to high uncertainty. Today I would like to focus mainly on how policymakers can nevertheless make use of r* estimates in practice.
In the first part of my remarks, I will briefly review the developments in real interest rates over the past decades. I will then turn to the concept of r* itself. In the second part, I will discuss how policymakers can use r* in practice to assess the monetary policy stance, and in particular, how they can deal with the inherent uncertainty in r* estimates. Here I will draw especially on the Swiss National Bank's experience.