Interest rate pass through and asymmetries in retail deposit and lending rates: An analysis using data from Colombian banks

Using a sample of Colombian banks, we examine retail interest rate adjustment in response to changes in wholesale interest rates. Interest rate pass through running from wholesale to retail rates is found to be both partial and heterogeneous across banks. This suggests that the effectiveness of monetary policy is limited. Further investigation reveals that the behaviour of retail deposit rates appears consistent with collusive behaviour between banks insofar as interest rates are more rapidly adjusted downwards than upwards. In the case of retail lending rates, it appears that banks more rapidly reduce than increase rates. This suggests that expansionary monetary policy in Colombia may be relatively more effective than contractionary policy.     

个人住房贷款行为与房贷调控的有效性分析

本文利用成都市房地产交易的微观数据(2004—2006),实证检验了我国房地产信贷政策的变化对微观个体住房贷款决策行为的影响效果。我们发现,地方购房者的贷款决策对中央利率调控有明显反应。实证结果显示:当长期贷款利率升幅较短期贷款利率升幅高0.1百分点时,贷款者选择短期贷款的概率增加8.4个百分点;而且利用商业住房贷款利率和公积金贷款利率变动差异的"自然实验",我们有效控制了可能由宏观政策内生性产生的计量问题,从微观角度为长、短期利率政策的有效性提供了更可靠的实证检验。此外,我们还发现首付比例政策并没有得到地方银行的严格实施。因此,文章建议政府进一步重视利率政策对房地产市场的调整,而包括首付比例等相关政策的实施需加强对地方执行部门监管的力度。     

Bank behavior, incomplete interest rate pass-through, and the cost channel of monetary policy transmission

This paper employs a New Keynesian DSGE model to explore the role of banks within the cost channel of monetary policy transmission for shaping the interest rate pass-through from money market rates to loan rates. Banks extend loans to firms in an environment of monopolistic competition by setting their loan rates in a staggered way, which means that the adjustment of the aggregate loan rate to a monetary policy shock is sticky. We estimate the model for the euro area by adopting a minimum distance approach. Our findings exhibit that (i) financial costs are an important factor for price changes, (ii) frictions in the loan market have an effect on the propagation of monetary policy shocks as the pass-through from a change in money market rates to loan rates is incomplete, and (iii) the strength of the cost channel is mitigated as banks shelter firms from monetary policy shocks by smoothing loan rates.     

Central bank intervention,the current account,and exchange rates

This paper seeks to explain exchange rate and current account or net foreign assets behavior under central bank foreign exchange rate intervention. To analyze central bank intervention we use the current account-net foreign assets identity, as well as the long-run monetary exchange rate model. The intervention function is one where exchange rate deviations from equilibrium are governed by nonlinear adjustments. That is, exchange rate deviations from their long-run equilibrium are such that the degree of reversion towards equilibrium increases with the size of the deviation from equilibrium. In this type of nonlinear function exchange rates determine the current account, and the current account in turn determines exchange rates. This iterative duality contrasts with several portfolio balance models where exchange rates are a function of trade, but trade is not a function of exchange rates. This two way causality is slightly more complex, but is also analytically richer than assuming that exchange rates change solely in a one step process as targeted by central banks. Managing exchange rates is posited to be an active iterative feedback process where intervention changes the current account, which may in turn make further intervention necessary.     

价格型货币政策操作框架：利率走廊的 条件、机制与实现*

随着商业银行产权市场化水平的提高,以及金融创新的不断涌现,数量型货币政策操作框架的有效性开始下降。本文通过对商业银行行为的分析,基于其极大化经营利润的诉求,论证了利率走廊系统的运行条件及机制。研究认为,完善的制度安排、商业银行的市场主体地位、充分竞争的市场、高效的实时清算系统等是利率走廊系统发挥作用的基础条件;在利率走廊系统运行过程中,当货币市场被注入过多流动性时,其可能转化成地板系统;价格型货币政策操作框架能够实现分别进行资金价格调控与资金数量调控,从而使货币政策操作的针对性与有效性得到提高。由此论文从利率走廊系统的构建、中央银行的职责、商业银行的行为等方面,提出我国货币政策操作框架从数量型调控向价格型调控转型的路径。     

The Nonstationarity of Money and Prices in Interdependent Economies

In most nations, paths of monetary aggregates and prices consistently depart from stationary trends. This paper shows that this is a fundamental implication when monetary authorities of interdependent countries seek to smooth their home output and prices in the presence of incomplete world output-market integration and structural asymmetries. Using a two-country model with interdependent output supply schedules, we show that this conclusion holds whether the exchange rate floats or is fixed. It also holds if monetary policies are coordinated. Therefore, optimal monetary policy choices by central banks yield stationary paths for money and prices only under very specific conditions.     

A threshold cointegration analysis of interest rate pass-through to UK mortgage rates

This paper empirically analyses the interest rate transmission mechanism in the United Kingdom by exploring the pass-through of the official rate to the money market rate and of the market rate to the mortgage rate. Potential asymmetries, due to financial market conditions and monetary policy, lead to the use of a nonlinear threshold error-correction model, with hypothesis tests based on nonstandard bootstrap procedures that take into account the discrete nature of changes in the official rate. The empirical results indicate the presence of substantial asymmetries in both steps of the process, with these asymmetries depending on past changes in the money market rate and whether these are motivated by official rate changes. Generalized impulse response function analysis shows that adjustments differ with regard to the sign and magnitude of interest rate changes in a way that is consistent with conditions in the interbank and mortgage markets over the recent period.     

Mortgage payments and household consumption in urban China

By exploiting variation both in mortgage payoffs and mortgage interest-rate resets, we find that a decline in mortgage payments induces a significant increase in nondurable goods spending, even when households have substantial amounts of liquidity. Following mortgage payoff, households increase consumption expenditures by 61% of the original payment. In comparison, households increase consumption by only 36% in response to a transitory payment adjustment induced by interest rate changes. Households with a higher payment-to-income ratio have a significantly lower marginal propensity to consume (MPC). These results have practical implications for policy markers seeking to design consumption boosting policies and are important for understanding how changes in monetary policy may affect consumer spending patterns.     

A realistic model for official interest rate movements and their consequences

This article extends the Vector Autoregression (VAR) methodology to examine the consequences of monetary policy decisions by considering two types of nonlinearities in the determination of official interest rates: (1) the asymmetry related to the different nature of the discrete and infrequent positive and negative interest rate movements determined by central bankers and (2) the convexity in the transmission of policy shocks induced by the nonnegativity constraint in interest rates. For the UK, we find some evidence of both types of asymmetries. In the US, responses to unexpected interest rate shocks are far more symmetric. Results highlight the importance of considering all types of asymmetries when studying monetary transmission.     

Politics and the UK's monetary policy

This paper examines whether politics causes regime shifts in deviations from the optimal monetary policy in the United Kingdom. After using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to construct the welfare-maximizing policy rule and deviations from the optimal Taylor rule, we show that politics does indeed play an important role in explaining these deviations. In addition to politics, unemployment rates account for regime shifts in the Taylor rule deviations.     

Are there asymmetries in the response of bank interest rates to monetary shocks?

This article examines the velocity and asymmetry of the response of bank interest rates to monetary policy shocks. Using an asymmetric vector error correction model, it analyses the pass-through of changes in money market rates to retail bank interest rates in Italy in the period 1985–2002. The main results of the article are: (1) the speed of adjustment of bank interest rates to monetary policy changes increased significantly after the introduction of the 1993 Consolidated Law on Banking; (2) interest rate adjustment in response to positive and negative shocks is asymmetric in the short run, but not in the long run; (3) banks adjust their loan (deposit) rate faster during periods of monetary tightening (easing); (4) this asymmetry almost vanished since the 1990s.     

Incomplete interest rate pass-through under credit and labor market frictions

By introducing search and matching frictions in both the labor and the credit markets into a cash in advance New Keynesian DSGE model, we provide a novel explanation of the incomplete pass-through from policy rates to loan rates. We show that this phenomenon is ineradicable if banks possess some power in the bargaining over the loan rate of interest, if the cost of posting job vacancies is positive and if firms and banks sustain costs when searching for lines of credit and when posting credit vacancies, respectively. We also show that the presence of credit market frictions moderates the reactions of employment and wages to a monetary shock. Finally, we confirm the finding that pass-through incompleteness has limited short-term impacts on the transmission of monetary policy shocks to output and inflation.     

What is on the ECB’s mind? Monetary policy before and after the global financial crisis

This paper analyzes the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) both before and after the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008. In the literature, researchers typically select one Taylor rule-based model to analyze monetary policy of central banks and to derive determinants for the interest rate setting. However, uncertainty about the choice of this respective model is typically neglected. In contrast, we apply a Bayesian model averaging (BMA) approach to extend the Taylor rule to account for model uncertainty driven by heterogeneity in the ECB’s decision-making body, the Governing Council. Our results suggest the following: First, the ECB focuses on the inflation rate when setting interest rates. Second, economic activity indicators were in the focus of the ECB before the financial crisis. Third, over the last decade, the role of economic activity decreased, indicating that inflation is the main driver of monetary policy decisions in the post-crisis period. Fourth, when setting interest rates, central bankers appear to consider more than one model.     

Nonlinear Exchange Rate Adjustment and the Monetary Model

Although the empirical literature has delivered evidence in favor of nonlinearities in nominal and real exchange rate adjustment, the corresponding mechanisms with respect to the relationship between nominal exchange rates and fundamentals in general have rarely been put under any close scrutiny. This paper extends the work of other authors, who estimate exponential smooth transition autoregressive models to deviations of the exchange rate from monetary fundamentals. Using monthly data from 1976:01 to 2010:12 for the USA, UK, and Japan, this paper first adopts a cointegrated vector autoregression (VAR) framework to test for the multivariate validity of the monetary model by applying restrictions on the long‐run relationships. Then, nonlinear vector error correction models are estimated to tackle the question of whether the adjustment of the nominal exchange rate with respect to those relationships follows a nonlinear path.     

Macroprudential policy and the inward transmission of monetary policy: The case of Chile,Mexico, and Russia

This paper studies whether domestic macroprudential policy may attenuate the inward transmission of monetary policy shocks from the United States to domestic bank lending growth in three emerging market economies—Chile, Mexico, and Russia. Identification relies on banks’ heterogeneous exposure to prudential policies and the fact that foreign monetary policy shocks are exogenous from the perspective of these economies. After analyzing the effects of the aggregate domestic prudential policy stance, we focus on specific prudential policies targeting mortgage and consumer loans, as well as foreign‐currency deposits. Although our overall results are mixed, we find evidence that the strength of international monetary policy spillovers varies depending on the stance of domestic macroprudential policy. In particular, a tighter reserve requirement stance over foreign‐currency deposits in Chile dampens the effect of an international monetary policy shock on domestic local‐currency lending, but reinforces that on foreign‐currency lending, whereas in Russia, it dampens the effect on both local‐currency and foreign‐currency lending, although to different degrees. Prudential policies targeting the asset side of banks’ balance sheets, such as mortgage loans or consumer credit, are found to amplify international monetary policy spillovers in some cases and attenuate it in others, depending on the country context.     

Monetary Policy in Low Income Countries in the Face of The Global Crisis: A Structural Analysis

We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a banking sector to analyse the impact of the financial crisis in developing countries and the role of the monetary policy response, with an application to Zambia. We view the crisis as a combination of three related shocks: a worsening in the terms of the trade, an increase in the country's risk premium and a decrease in the risk appetite of local banks. Model simulations broadly match the path of the economy during this period. We derive policy implications for central banks, and for dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modelling of monetary policy, in low‐income countries.     

The dynamic of bank lending channel: Basel regulatory constraint

This article analyzes the impact of monetary policy on bank behavior under the Basel I regulatory framework using a dynamic model with monopolistic competition. There are two main objectives. First, we theoretically predict the dynamic model of bank lending channels under the Basel I regulatory constraint. Second, we empirically analyze the situation in Malaysia by using panel data on 23 commercial banks in the period of 1999 to 2007 by using General Method of Moments. The empirical results show that market rates on loans and policy rates are important influences on average rates of banks' loans. This has an implication that Malaysian banks have the power to set their own prices on loans as they are influenced by the change in the market rate and policy rate. We also have proven that the previous period of spread risk weighted loans and securities is statistically significant and correlated with the average loan rate, whereas risk weighted securities is also statistically significant and correlated with the average time deposit rate in both periods. This shows that the role of risk-weighted assets under the Basel I is important in influencing the optimal rates on loans and time deposits.     

Monetary policy and multiple equilibria with constrained investment and externalities

This paper focuses on two mechanisms under which interest-rate feed-back rules induce local indeterminacy in a closed economy with capital accumulation: arbitrage activity and the pricing channel. It shows that constrained investment, in the sense that it requires liquidity or that adjustment to the stock of capital is costly, is enough to induce indeterminacy if monetary policy follows a strictly passive interest rate rule. Determinacy of equilibrium is ensured under an active monetary policy stance. These results change when production externalities are introduced into the model so as to mimic the pricing channel in New Keynesian models. In this case, a policy stance that ensures determinacy is either active or strictly passive. In view of the contradicting results for the passive stance and the similar results for the active stance it is recommended that central banks act according to the active stance.     

Asymmetries in the Thai lending–deposit rate spread: an econometric analysis

This study examines the asymmetric behaviour of lending–deposit rate spread in the emerging Thai economy over the period 1991:1 to 2007:1. Although both the threshold autoregressive model and the Momentum Threshold Autoregressive (MTAR) model detect asymmetries, the MTAR model is a better fit for the sample data. The finding that Thai banks exhibit faster adjustment in lending rates when the spread is widening (i.e. falling deposit rates) than when the spread is narrowing (i.e. rising deposit rates) supports the consumer reaction hypothesis of Stiglitz and Weiss. This phenomenon is the result of the ‘oligopsonistic’ relationship between the banks and their powerful corporate customers, and the attendant practice of the ‘name’-based lending.     

Are monetary-policy reaction functions asymmetric?: The role of nonlinearity in the Phillips curve

This paper investigates the implications of a nonlinear Phillips curve for the derivation of optimal monetary policy rules. Combined with a quadratic loss function, the optimal policy is also nonlinear, with the policy-maker increasing interest rates by a larger amount when inflation or output are above target than the amount it will reduce them when they are below target. Specifically, the main prediction of our model is that such a source of nonlinearity leads to the inclusion of the interaction between expected inflation and the output gap in an otherwise linear Taylor rule. We find empirical support for this type of asymmetries in the interest rate-setting behaviour of four European central banks but none for the US Fed.