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An interest rate is the rate at which interest is paid by borrowers (debtors) for the use of money that they borrow from lenders (creditors). Specifically, the interest rate is a percentage of principal paid a certain number of times per period for all periods during the total term of the loan or credit. Interest rates are normally expressed as a percentage of the principal for a period of one year, sometimes they are expressed for different periods such as a month or a day. Different interest rates exist parallelly for the same or comparable time periods, depending on the default probability of the borrower, the residual term, the payback currency, and many more determinants of a loan or credit. For example, a company borrows capital from a bank to buy new assets for its business, and in return the lender receives rights on the new assets as collateral and interest at a predetermined interest rate for deferring the use of funds and instead lending it to the borrower. Interest-rate targets are a vital tool of monetary policy and are taken into account when dealing with variables like investment, inflation, and unemployment. The central banks of countries generally tend to reduce interest rates when they wish to increase investment and consumption in the country's economy. However, a low interest rate as a macro-economic policy can be risky and may lead to the creation of an economic bubble, in which large amounts of investments are poured into the real-estate market and stock market. In developed economies, interest-rate adjustments are thus made to keep inflation within a target range for the health of economic activities or cap the interest rate concurrently with economic growth to safeguard economic momentum.〔http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2003/06/pdf/inflatio.pdf〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Finance & Development, June 2003 - Contents )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Finance & Development, March 2010 - Back to Basics )〕 ==Interest rate notations== What is commonly referred to as the ''interest rate'' in the media is generally the rate offered on overnight deposits by the Central Bank or other authority, annualized. The total interest on a loan or investment depends on the timescale the interest is calculated on, because interest paid may be compounded. In retail finance, the annual percentage rate and effective annual rate concepts have been introduced to help consumers easily compare different products with different payment structures. In business and investment finance, the effective interest rate is often derived from the yield, a composite measure which takes into account all payments of interest and capital from the investment. The notion of annual effective discount rate, often called simply the ''discount rate'', is also used in finance, as an alternative measure to the effective annual rate which is more useful or standard in some contexts. A positive annual effective discount rate is always a lower number than the interest rate it represents. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Interest rate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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