World Interest Rates and Investment

In a world of integrated capital markets, the price of credit — which I measure by short-term expected real interest rates — is determined to equate the world aggregate of investment demand to the world aggregate of desired national saving. I implement this approach empirically by approximating the world by aggregates for ten major developed countries. For the period since 1959, the common component of expected real interest rates for these countries relates especially to developments on world stock and oil markets and secondarily, to world monetary and fiscal policies.