So, “output gaps” are likely to be smaller, which in many policy rules would suggest higher interest rates, other things being equal. While a lower steady-state real rate  5  See Brynjolfsson and McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. 6  Summers in “U.S.
Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound” offers different concerns. He argues that the real rate of interest may have declined to very low, or even negative, levels leading to the possibility of an inefficient equilibrium and a form of secular stagnation.