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Time and Interest Rates

24 April, 2015 - 11:52

Learning Objectives

  • Define interest and the interest rate.
  • Describe and show algebraically how to compute present value.
  • List and explain the factors that affect what the present value of some future payment will be.

Time, the saying goes, is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once. And the fact that everything does not happen at once introduces an important complication in economic analysis.

When a company decides to use funds to install capital that will not begin to produce income for several years, it needs a way to compare the significance of funds spent now to income earned later. It must find a way to compensate financial investors who give up the use of their funds for several years,until the project begins to pay off. How can payments that are distributed across time be linked to one another? Interest rates are the linkage mechanism; we shall investigate how they achieve that linkage in this section.