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Macroeconomics
Investment and real interest rates
Intuition as to why high real interest rates lead to low investment and why low rates lead to high investment. Created by Sal Khan.
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(3:50) Why would you invest in project E with borrowed money (5%-3% = 2%) rather than lending out money for 3%?(11 votes)
I would assume that in this model you either have the money or you don't. If you have it you can either invest it or lend it. If you don't you can only borrow it to invest in a project that earns more than your interest expense. In other words, you cannot lend money that you don't have, so you need to borrow it.
Hope my answer makes sense.(24 votes)
- As interest rate become lower, it increases the rate of investment, however, would that change the rate of MPS? because the lower of interest rate, the lesser people are willing to save, thus, decreases down the multiplier effect?(6 votes)
The MPS is a purely theoretical concept - don't take it too seriously. In reality people factor in an enormous variety of considerations in order to decide how much money they will keep on hand. Ie, most people like to have at least a few weeks salary saved up, so if they get fired they'll have time to cope with that. Other people like to have at least a few years salary saved up, because they're more risk-averse. Some might want to save up for a big purchase. The list is endless.
In reality then, the interest rate is the manifestation of the individual actors' preference for deferring gratification now, in order to invest/save for the future. The more people save, the lower the interest rate, and therefore the more investment opportunities are worth funding.
It is true though that there is some feedback. One of the many considerations when choosing to save is the amount of interest you would get to do so.(3 votes)
If the percentage gain go's up wouldn't competition drive the price down also if low gains are impossible couldn't that it's self be a sign of issues?(1 vote)
Yes - but you're right, it would change the supply and demand.
Imagine everyone would invest into apple trees because there would be an amazing demand for fresh apples (each apple would sell for more therefore the investment into apple trees would be the best option in the short run).
Now think of what would happen if everyone started producing apples - you would have too many apples in the market in the long run, meaning their price would drop. This would in turn lower the return on investment when investing into apple trees (it would go close to 19% or below it).
This would offset the investment frenzy and would protect the market in the long run as more people would start to save in a bank (or invest elsewhere) as it would become more profitable.
The market usually fixes itself naturally - you can always imbalance it only in the short run but in the long run it stays in equilibrium.
Hope this helped - if not ask and I will try to answer better.(5 votes)
- So if interest rates go up, people will deposit more money in the bank hoping to reap the benefits? If that's true, what will the bank do with the money - won't they invest it themselves? So why would investment go down then?(2 votes)
Capital investment goes down because fewer investment projects are economical for companies when interest rates are high.(2 votes)
at3:25why would any one want to do project b-e (18-5%) when you could just invest in project a (20%)(2 votes)- Investments are made on the basis of risk taking ability of an individual. If you are getting more return , more risk will be associated with it, thus on an individual's risk appetite or the type of security, one can plan to invest accordingly(1 vote)
The guy wanted to think about how real interest rates drive planned investment(2 votes)
Why would you not do project A a bunch of times ?(1 vote)
Because when you try to do project A a second time, the return will decrease slightly. It will continue to decrease until it is less than the return on project B.(2 votes)
What about the investors though? If I was a potential investor, the lower interest rates were the less appealing lending out my money to businesses would be. I'd be more tempted to just spend the money on something nice (i.e. I'd use my money to consume instead of invest). Isn't there some sort of supply and demand mechanism at work here with investment that would mean there's some sort of market equilibrium interest rate for investment where when it's too high or too low there's excess demand or supply?(1 vote)- Yes, interest rates are the price of money, determined by supply and demand for it.(1 vote)
- At about0:18Sal says to think of investment as a function of interest rates.
Mathematically how will a linear investment function I(r) be represented similar to how the consumption function(which is also a component of aggregate demand) that is expressed as C = Autonomous Consumption + MPC(Disposable Income) ?(1 vote) - Are there any situations where interest on borrowing or lending would be the same, or even similar?(1 vote)
3:50
Video transcript
In our planned expenditure
remodel we've been assuming that planned investment is fixed. What I want to do in
this video is think about how real interest rates
drive planned investment. Think about the function investment as a function of real interest
rates. Planned investment as a function of real interest rates. Talking about real
interest rates, I'm really just talking about nominal interest rates factoring out or
discounting what's going on with inflation. There's
other videos where we go into more depth about
that. Another thing if there were no
inflation real and nominal rates would be the same thing. I want to tackle it with
a very tangible example. Let's say this up coming
year there's a bunch of potential planned projects. Let's call this projects.
Theses are potential investments. You have
projects, and then you have some level of expected return. Each of the people who are thinking about these projects, they all
have their spreadsheets out, and they've taken
in risk and probabilities and all of the rest. They've come up with their expected return numbers. Let's say project A has
an expected return of 20%, B 18%, C 16%. I'll do a couple more. D is 10% , E is 5% and F is 2%.
Let's say initially in one state of affairs interest rates
are relatively high. Let's R1 is equal to 19% interest rates. We have 19% real interest
rates. These are the real expected returns.
Which of these projects will actually be invested in? Which of the ones will people actually do? If someone has the cash, they say well, I could either lend my money out for 19%, or I could do this project and get 20%. If they have the cash
they would definitely do this. If they don't
have the cash, they could say, well, I could
borrow the money for 19%, and I could invest it at 20%.
I'll make money off of that. Project A will definitely be done. What about project B? Project B, if the person
actually has the cash on hand to do project
B, they say I could do project B and get an 18% real return, or I could lend that
money out and get a 19% in real return. Actually, I would not do project B. I'll just say
I would not do anything that has a even a lower real return. If I could potentially
do project B, but I had to borrow the money,
if I have to borrow the money at 19% real interest, and I'm only getting 18% on it, that's a
money loosing proposition. I wouldn't do B, and I
definitely wouldn't do all these things that get a lower return. When I have high interest
rates right over here the only thing I would do is project A. Let's think about what
would happen if interest rates went down. If real interest rates went down. Let's say real interest
... let's call that R2. Real interest rates go
down to ... let's say they go down to 3%. Once
again, project A you are definitely going
to do. If you have the money on hand, you get
20% doing project A. You definitely don't want
to lend it out at 3%. If you don't have the
money on hand, you can borrow at 3% and invest at 20%. By the same logic, people
would do project B. You could borrow at 3% and make 18%. If you have the money,
you get 18% verses 3% on your money, so you definitely do this. You do all of these up to project E. If you have the money,
you would rather put that money and get 5% then lend
it out and only get 3%. You'll even do project
E if you need to borrow it and still makes sense.
Borrow money at 3%, invest it at 5%, your
making some real return. The only one that you would not
do is project F right over here. Here you aren't actually
covering your cost of borrowing. If you have to borrow at 3% and invest at 2%, doesn't make sense. If you have the money,
you would rather lend your money at 3% then
do project F. So, your definitely not going to
do F in this scenario. Obviously do it in neither scenario. Right over here, you'd
do all of the above. You would do A, B, C,
D, not all of the above. All of the above except
for F. A, B, C, D, and E. Let's just think about the
rough level of investments. If we were to plot on
this axis right over here, if we were to plot the
investments as a function of real interest rate,
and over here we actually have the ... independent
variables are real interest rate. At a high
real interest we had a low level investment.
We only did project A. That's right over there. That's A only. This is when we were at R1. When we lowered interest
rates to R2, we had a much higher level of investment. We did all of these
projects right over here. You had a much higher level of investment. This is A, B, C, D, and
E. You see that you have an inverse relationship.
The lower the real interest rate, the more
investment that's going to go on. The higher the
interest rate, the less investment that goes on. You can debate whether
it's a curve or a line, bur for the sake of
simplicity, we'll assume that it looks something
like ... I'll draw a dotted line it's easier for me do that. It might look something like that. Now, we can use this
insight to start thinking about how a change in
real interest rate might shift our plan expenditures on our [unintelligible 05:50]
and from that we can start to think about the IS curve. The famous IS curve and the ISLM model.