These results also have interesting implications for fiscal policy. If monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound, then fiscal policy is generally more powerful because monetary policy and interest rates won’t respond to changes in fiscal policy. In other words, at the zero lower bound, interest rates will not “crowd out” the effects of fiscal policy (see Woodford 2011 and Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Rebelo 2012). The results presented here suggest that longer-term interest rates—which matter more for private-sector spending—were not significantly constrained by the zero lower bound until at least late 2011. So it’s unlikely that the effects of fiscal policy were much greater than normal before then.