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| 利率以及它对决策者的重要性 利率是重要的经济变量,但人们对利率的决定因素的理解仍然不太清晰。例如,在新古典利率理论中，利率被认为是由可贷资金的供给和需求决定的。与这种观点相反,后凯恩斯主义理论认为,利率是由中央银行决定的，并将它作为追求货币政策目标过程中的重要政策变量。然而,为了理解利率的决定因素,重要的是要首先理解利率的含义。 利率 在一段时间内，利率可以被定义为一个借款人为了使用不属于他的现金而支付一定的价格,然后返还给贷款人，并因推迟消费或借出资金而得到的价格。金融市场上的借款和贷款在很大程度上取决于利率。在经济学中,利息是为资本服务而支付的费用，它代表了资本回报率。换句话说,利率就是雇佣资本的价格。资本作为一种生产要素,以机械、设备或其他实物资产的形式用于商品生产，资本必须由企业家用资金购买。 Interest rates and its importance to policy makers Interest rates are key economic variables but the understanding of their determinants is still confounding. In neoclassical interest-rate theory for instance, the interest rate is believed to be determined by the supply of and demand for loanable funds. Contrary to this view, the Post Keynesian approach sugests that the interest rate is determined by central banks as a key policy variable in pursuit of its monetary policy objective. However, in order to understand the determinants of interest rate, it is important to first understand the rate of interest. The Rate of Interest Interest can be defined as the price a borrower has to pay to enjoy the use of cash which he does not own, and the return a lender enjoys for deferring consumption or parting with liquidity for a period of time. Borrowing and lending in the financial market depend to a significant extent on the rate of interest. In economics, interest is a payment for the services of capital. It represents a return on capital. In other words, interest is the price of hiring capital. Capital, as a factor of production, takes the form of machinery, equipment or any other physical assets used in production of goods which funds must be made available to the entrepreneurs to buy. Purchase of capital assets is called investment and funds made available for the purchase of such capital assets is called financial capital. Some persons have to supply this financial capital to the entrepreneurs who would use it for investment in real capital assets. The payment to those who supply financial capital for its use is called the market rate of interest. This is expressed as a percentage of sums of funds borrowed. Types of Interest Rates The nominal interest rate is the rate that is actually paid on loanable funds in monetary form. It the rate that is quoted on any short or long term debt instrument which does not take into account the tendency of fluctuations in the purchasing power of money- inflation. Since the interest rates and loans are typically in nominal money quantities, rather than real physical quantities, the nominal interest rate must contain an allowance for the rate of price changes so that lender's wealth is not eroded away by inflation. Thus a real interest rate r has two components: nominal interests rate i and expected inflation π. The real interest rate is the interest rate paid or received after taking into consideration the effect of inflation: i=r+π In the real life, interest rates paid will also depend upon the possible risk premium (the perceived riskiness of the asset and its liquidity). Thus, if l is a liquidity premium and σ is a risk premium, then we have: i=r+π + l + σ Importance of Interest Rates Interest rate plays a very important role for firms’ and individuals’ investment, consumption and savings decisions. This is because loanable funds are as a result of lender’s ability to forego present consumption in conditions of comparative uncertainty, in return for consumption later, in an uncertain future. It is an incentive to compensate savers to forgo actual consumption and lend to the deficit sector for investment purposes. (Howells and Bain 2005: 183) Over the years, interest rate has played an important role in driving growth and development in the economy through the effective bridging of funding gaps between the surplus and the deficit sectors of the economy. However, it has also placed succeeded in placing economic burden on individuals and businesses who have often struggled to meet up with the cost associated with the funds utilised for investment purposes. More so, the burden of interest rate has a multiplier effect on the economy as it is often been passes onto the final consumers with its attendant effects on their purchasing power and multiplier effect on other macroeconomic variables. For this reason, a lot of criticism has come the way of proponents of interest rates by the advocates of “Ethics, Usury and Islamic Finance” who has argued that this concept is not ethical and an undue compensation to fund providers who are not partakers of project risks. This factor has prompted the development of a new brand of finance to cater for the above aberration which forced a lot of banks to look the way of establishing Sharia compliant finance products to meet the needs of customers within that falls within this class. Although this fastest growing brand of finance has won a lot of accolade from its pundits, it’s not without its own share of controversies as some Islamic scholars believe that sharia-compliant finance actually goes against the spirit of Islam and the Qur’ān. Determinants of Rates of Interest There are a lot of factors responsible for determining the rate of interest in any economy. These factors has been summarised via two theories namely: The Loanable Funds Theory This theory attempts to identify the approximate causes of interest rate variations by analysing the supply of and demand for credit. The theory derives from the notion that savers make a decision between consumption now and consumption in the future. According to this theory, the rate of interest is determined at that level which equates the supply of securities with the demand for them, or, stated differently, the factors determining the interest rate are real investment demand and real saving – what the neoclassical economists called the forces of ‘productivity and thrift’ (Froyen 1996). The demand for loanable funds arises from firms’ desire to borrow to fund real investment (investment in capital goods or labour in order to produce goods or services). Real investment is a negative function of the interest rate since the interest rate reflects the cost of finance. All things equal, the lower the rate of interest, the more investment projects become profitable and the more willing investors will be to borrow in order to invest. This gives rises to a downward-sloping demand curve, which its position depends upon the productivity the assets to be financed. A supply of loanable funds, on the other side, arises from the desire of agents (households, individuals or other firms) to save, i.e. to forego consumption. In deciding between instant gratification or present consumption and future gratification or saving, the individual is concerned with the opportunity cost of each alternative. This opportunity cost is represented by the rate of interest. The higher the rate of interest, the greater the opportunity cost of present consumption, the higher the rate of saving. The supply curve’s position also depends upon agents’ (potential savers’) rate of time preference — individuals with a high rate of time preference have a strong preference for consumption now as opposed to consumption in the future and thus will require a correspondingly high rate of interest to induce them to save. The equilibrium real rate of interest will be that rate at which the demand for funds is equal to the supply of funds. According to the loanable funds theory, given an exogenous shock, the system maintains itself in equilibrium at full employment by changes in the equilibrium rate of interest. Any fall in investment, for instance, would be perfectly offset by an increase in consumption, and vice versa for a rise in investment demand. Similarly, any shift in the saving schedule will cause, via the rate of interest, an offsetting change in investment so as to ensure full employment. The Liquidity Preference or Money Market Theory The liquidity preference theory can be defined as a theory of the demand for money that depends, amongst other things, on the interest rate. This theory assumed that economic agents’ actions determine nominal rates of interest. This nominal rate is determined by the demand for money relative to its supply. Liquidity is seen as flexibility in a world of uncertainty. To accept less flexible alternatives, agents had to be bribed, that is, they had to be compensated for holding an asset that is less liquid than money. The interest rate, as the representative of this compensation, had to be whatever was necessary to convince agents to ‘part with liquidity’. The higher the degree of illiquidity of an asset, the higher the compensation necessary to convince wealth holders to accept the risks it represents. In an uncertain world, people seek a degree of liquidity and it is this demand for liquidity that is a major element in the determination of interest rates. In liquidity preference theory, the holding of money is not merely seen as a medium of exchange, but also as an asset. The money is not demanded for transactions purpose only - money as a medium of exchange as there could a precautionary demand and a speculative demand which fall under demand for money as an asset and not as a medium of exchange. |
