實質利率影響消費者和廠商投資

Real interest rate 實質利率 will affect their consumption and investment. Real interest rate means nominal interest rate minus inflation rate. The reason is that real interest rate is the opportunity cost of consumption and investment. If they deposit the money into the banks and can only yield negative interest rate that is money purchasing power is eroding, they will either consume ( as present consumption is preferable to future consumption) or invest ( yeild more to compensate the eroding power loss from inflation). Furthermore, the businessmen investment would be increase as the real interest cost is lower in inflationary environemnt. However, if real interest rate is positive (nominal interest rate is higher than inflation rate), they will prefer to deposit the money and defer their consumption and or investment later. Additionally, as interest cost is high, the businessmen will not invest so much as the investment cost is high.