International spillovers of monetary policy: Lessons from Chile,Korea, and Poland

In this paper, we assess evidence on international monetary policy spillovers to domestic bank lending in Chile, Korea, and Poland, using confidential bank-level data and different measures of monetary policy shocks in relevant currency areas. These three emerging market economies are small and open, their banking systems do not have significant presence overseas, and they can be considered as price takers in the world economy. Such features allow for better identification of binding financial constraints and foreign monetary policy shocks. We find that the monetary policy shocks spill over into domestic bank lending, modifying the degree to which financial frictions tighten or relax, and this evidence is consistent with international bank lending and portfolio channels.     

International monetary policy transmission through banks in small open economies

This paper studies the international transmission of monetary policy through banks in small open economies using the examples of Switzerland and Canada. We assess the inward transmission of foreign monetary policy for Switzerland and the outward transmission of domestic monetary policy for Canada. In both country cases, we focus on the international bank lending and the international portfolio channel, which make opposing predictions about how monetary policy transmits internationally through banks. Our results on the inward transmission of foreign monetary policy through banks in Switzerland are consistent with a role for the international portfolio channel, but we find no evidence for the traditional international bank lending channel. The results on the outward transmission of domestic monetary policy in Canada suggest that foreign lending by Canadian banks is affected through both channels, which work as predicted and largely balance each other.     

Does competition influence the bank lending channel in the euro area?

This paper examines how competition influences the bank lending channel in the euro area countries. Using a large panel of banks from 12 euro area countries for the period 2002–2010 we analyze the reaction of loan supply to monetary policy actions depending on the degree of bank competition. We find that the effect of monetary policy on bank lending is dependent on bank competition: the transmission of monetary policy via the bank lending channel is less pronounced for banks with extensive market power. Further investigation shows that banks with less market power were more sensitive to monetary policy only before the financial crisis. These results suggest that bank market power has a significant impact on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Therefore, wide variations in the level of bank market power may lead to asymmetric effects of the single monetary policy.     

Dissecting Foreign Bank Lending Behavior During the 2008–2009 Crisis

This paper analyzes the lending behavior of foreign‐owned banks during the recent global crisis. Using bank‐level panel data for 51 countries, the paper explores the role of affiliate and parent financial characteristics, host location, as well as the impact of parent geographic origin and reach on foreign banks’ credit growth. Overall, the analysis finds robust evidence that foreign banks curtailed the growth of credit relative to other banks, independent of the host region in which they operate. Banks from the United States reduced loan growth less than other parent banks. Neither the global nor regional reach of parent banks influenced the lending growth of foreign affiliates. Parent capitalization and not parent funding explained the behavior of foreign bank credit growth during the global crisis. However, funding did affect the lending behavior of domestic and foreign banks in host countries, with those relying more heavily on deposits suffering a smaller decline in bank lending. Although not the focus of the paper, we also find that government‐owned banks played a countercyclical role in all regions.     

面对货币政策调控时外资银行、本土银行信贷行为相同吗——基于MS-VAR模型的实证分析

本文利用MS-VAR模型分析了外资银行、本土银行在面对货币政策调控时的信贷行为,发现不论是在货币政策相对紧缩时期还是相对扩张时期,本土银行发放的信贷都会随货币供给增加而增加;外资银行信贷反应相对较弱;在货币政策相对扩张时期,外资银行发放的信贷会随着货币供给的增加而增加,但是在货币政策相对紧缩时期,其发放的信贷并不会随货币供给的增加而增加。本文对于加强货币政策调控有一定的启示作用。     

The impact of monetary policy on the financing behaviour of firms in the Euro area and the UK

Abstract

According to the ‘broad credit view’ bank-dependent firms are more strongly affected by monetary contractions than firms with access to non-bank forms of external finance. Within the credit view the bank lending channel focuses on the special role of bank loans, and predicts that monetary contractions reduce loan supply to firms facing information problems. However, the ‘relationship lending channel’ argues that, especially in bank-based economies, bank-dependent firms have close ties with banks, which may reduce the sensitivity of their use of bank debt to monetary shocks. The sensitivity of corporate debt structures to changes in the monetary policy stance is analysed using a sample of 22,000 firms in the Euro area and the UK. Evidence is found for the credit view, the relationship lending channel, but not for the bank lending channel.     

Do foreign banks increase competition? Evidence from emerging Asian and Latin American banking markets

In this paper we examine the impact of foreign bank penetration on the competitive structure of domestic banking sectors in host emerging economies. We focus our analysis on Asia and Latin America during the period 1997-2008. Using bank-level panel data to identify foreign banks and to estimate measures of banking competition, we are able to provide robust empirical evidence that an increase in foreign bank penetration enhances competition in these host countries’ banking sectors. We find that this positive foreign bank penetration and banking competition link is associated with a spillover effect from foreign banks to their domestic counterparts. This spillover effect becomes stronger when more efficient and less risky foreign banks enter into less concentrated host country markets. We also find that the spillover effect is greater when foreign banks enter in the form of ‘de novo penetration’ than through mergers or acquisitions of domestic banks (‘M&A penetration’).     

Sovereign risk and the bank lending channel in Europe

The main purpose of this article is to analyze how sovereign risk influences the loan supply reaction of banks to monetary policy through the bank lending channel. Additionally, we aim to test whether this reaction differs in easy and tight monetary regimes. Using a sample of 3125 banks from the euro zone between 1999 and 2012, we find that sovereign risk plays an important role in determining loan supply from banks during tight monetary regimes. Banks in higher sovereign risk countries reduce lending more during tight regimes. However, we find little evidence to support any relationship between sovereign risk and loan supply reaction to monetary policy expansions. These results are very interesting for the way monetary policy is conducted in Europe. Banking union, banking system strength, and the budget control of governments would be necessary measures to reduce the heterogeneous transmission of the monetary policy in the euro zone.     

The dampening effect of bank foreign liabilities on monetary policy: Revisiting monetary cooperation in East Asia

This paper addresses the cost of formal monetary cooperation from the perspective of monetary policy effectiveness. As banks tend to borrow from abroad in foreign currencies to fund domestic lending, monetary policy may have a reduced effect on the credit market and the economy. Results derived from bank level data in East Asia indicate that bank foreign liabilities significantly reduce the effectiveness of the credit channel of monetary policy, implying a relatively low cost of giving up monetary autonomy.     

Competition in banking and the lending channel: Evidence from bank-level data in Asia and Latin America

This paper examines how banking competition affects the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. We apply a two-step estimation procedure using bank-level panel data for commercial banks in 10 Asian and 10 Latin American countries during the period from 1996 to 2006. In the first step we measure the degree of banking competition by applying the methodology proposed by Panzar and Rosse (1987). In the second step we estimate a loan growth equation where the explanatory variables include the Panzar–Rosse measure of banking competition. The estimation results provide consistent evidence that increased competition in the banking sector weakens the transmission of monetary policy through the bank lending channel. This is especially true for banks in Latin American countries and banks of small size, low liquidity, and low capitalization. We also discuss the policy implications of the main findings of this paper.     

The Impact of Foreign Banks on Monetary Policy Transmission During the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–2009: Evidence from Korea

This article examines the impact of foreign banks on the monetary policy transmission mechanism in the Korean economy during the period from 2000 to 2012, with a specific focus on the lending behavior of banks with different types of ownership. Using bank-level panel data of the banking system in Korea, we present consistent evidence on the buffering impact that the foreign banks, especially foreign bank branches including US bank branches, on the effectiveness of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Korea from the bank-lending channel perspective during the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.     

Does bank lending affect output? Evidence from the U.S. states

This paper uses a panel of state-level data to test whether changes in bank loan supply affect output. Since the U.S. states are small open economies with fixed exchange rates, state-specific shocks to money demand are automatically accommodated, leading to changes in lending if banks rely on deposits as a source of funding. Using these shocks as an instrumental variable, I find that shocks to money demand have large and statistically significant effects on the supply of bank loans, but loans have small, often negative and statistically insignificant effects on output.     

Multinational banking and the international transmission of financial shocks: Evidence from foreign bank subsidiaries

Using bank-level data on 368 foreign subsidiaries of 68 multinational banks in 47 emerging economies during 1994–2008, we present consistent evidence that internal capital markets in multinational banking contribute to the transmission of financial shocks from parent banks to foreign subsidiaries. We find that internal capital markets transmit favorable and adverse shocks by affecting subsidiaries’ reliance on their own internal funds for lending. We also find that the transmission of financial shocks varies across types of shocks; is strongest among subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe, followed by Asia and Latin America; is global rather than regional; and becomes more conspicuous in recent years. We also explore various conditions under which the international transmission of financial shocks via internal capital markets in multinational banking is stronger, including the subsidiaries’ reliance on funds from their parent bank, the subsidiaries’ entry mode, and the capital account openness and banking market structure in host countries.     

Euro area banking and monetary policy shocks in the QE era

This paper assesses the effects of monetary policy shocks on the macroeconomy and the euro area banking sector after the global financial crisis. First, financial risk-return indicators of the banking sector based on a compound option-based structural credit risk model are embedded in a large macro-financial quarterly database covering the period 2008Q4–2019Q4. Second, a SFAVAR identifies and estimates the shocks’ responses relating them to the endogenous build-up of banks’ vulnerabilities which are consistent with the internally coherent structure of the credit risk model. By introducing structure in the understanding of banks’ asset-liability management behavior following monetary policy shocks, the research strategy contributes to disentangling results that are often mixed in the empirical literature. The study finds that unconventional monetary policy, in particular the Asset Purchase Program of the European Central Bank, seems to have been more successful than conventional monetary policy in raising output and inflation. The desired boost to bank lending has been muted and loan cyclicality has varied across countries and loan types. The performance of the banking sector following monetary policy shocks can be characterized by a drop in expected return on equity and assets, a relaxation of lending conditions and increased correlation between banks’ assets return and the market return, a mechanism pointing to enhanced risk-taking. While banks’ probabilities of default fall following monetary policy shocks, the price of risk increases. Banks’ net worth rises via higher market capitalization and implied assets value together with lower volatility, despite often incurring more debt. Risk-taking in the banking sector may pose a risk to financial stability, especially if its effects on banks’ vulnerability spread and increase systemic risk. The unintended endogenous build-up of macro-financial vulnerabilities may need to become part of monetary policymaking.     

The international transmission of monetary policy

This paper presents the novel results from an internationally coordinated project by the International Banking Research Network (IBRN) on the cross-border transmission of conventional and unconventional monetary policy through banks. Teams from seventeen countries use confidential micro-banking data for the years 2000 through 2015 to explore the international transmission of monetary policies of the United States, euro area, Japan, and United Kingdom. Two other studies use international data with different degrees of granularity. International spillovers into lending to the private sector do occur, especially for US policies, and bank-specific heterogeneity influences the magnitudes of transmission. The effects are supportive of the international bank lending channel and the portfolio channel of monetary policy transmission. They also show that the frictions that banks face matter; in particular, foreign currency funding and hedging considerations can be a key source of heterogeneity. The forms of bank balance sheet heterogeneity that differentiate spillovers across banks are not uniform across countries. International spillovers into lending can be large for some banks, even while the average international spillovers of policies into nonbank lending generally are not large.     

The Bank Lending Channel: A FAVAR Analysis

We examine the bank lending channel (BLC) of monetary transmission in a factor‐augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR). A FAVAR exploits large numbers of macro‐economic indicators and allows us to consider an alternative identification of monetary shocks and analyze the lending response of banks at the aggregate and individual levels. We find that the existence of the BLC is more prevalent than previously thought using aggregated lending data, while the lending response of individual banks are driven more by specific innovations than monetary shocks. Nonetheless, the average individual bank response to a monetary shock is consistent with the existence of a BLC.     

Consolidation in banking and the lending channel of monetary transmission: Evidence from Asia and Latin America

This paper examines the relationship between increased consolidation in banking and monetary policy transmission in eighteen Asian and Latin American economies, using bank-level data from 1996 to 2006. Our results provide consistent evidence that as concentration in banking increases, the bank lending channel is weakened, leading the monetary policy transmission mechanism to be less effective. We also investigate how this relationship between concentration and the strength of the lending channel depends on bank-specific characteristics. Using bank-level balance sheet and income statement data allows us, first, to better identify the effects of banking consolidation on the supply-side bank lending channel from those of the demand-side interest rate channel, and second, to test for any systematic differences in the impact of consolidation on monetary policy transmission across banks of different size and financial strength. We also discuss potential explanations for and policy implications of the main findings of this paper.     

Evidence of a bank lending channel in the UK

Using balance sheet data for a panel of UK listed firms, we find evidence of a bank lending channel of monetary transmission. A higher interest rate induces more bank lending to listed companies, but this effect diminishes if monetary policy becomes tight enough to impose severe constraints on bank loan lending. The dynamic behaviour of bank debt versus non-bank debt shows that the lending channel works through cutting back loan supplies to small, bank-dependent firms while restricting the bank’s ability to provide financial assistance to other firms. We see cross-sectional differences between bank-dependent and non-bank-dependent listed companies, and between listed and non-listed companies: Both can contribute to the size effect of investment. Small firms bear most of the reductions in bank loan supplies, and since they do not have many alternatives to bank finance, they suffer more from monetary tightening than big firms. This is consistent with inventory behavior. Furthermore, we have found that big, non-bank-dependent firms can benefit more from the bank–firm relationship than small, bank-dependent firms.     

The macroeconomic impact of bank capital requirements in emerging economies: Past evidence to assess the future

We test for emerging economies the hypothesis – previously verified for G-10 countries only – that the enforcement of bank capital asset requirements (CARs) curtails the supply of credit. The econometric analysis on individual bank data suggests three main results. First, CAR enforcement significantly trimmed credit supply, particularly at less-well capitalized banks. Second, the negative impact has been larger for countries enforcing CARs in the aftermath of a currency/financial crisis. Third, the adverse impact of CARs has been somewhat smaller for foreign-owned banks, suggesting that opening up to foreign investors may have partly shielded the domestic banking sector from negative shocks. Overall, CAR enforcement – inducing banks to reduce their lending – may have had both beneficial and detrimental effects. On one hand, it may have reduced ill-advised lending – possibly induced by banks' exploitation of the public safety net – and this is desirable. On the other hand, CAR enforcement may have induced an aggregate credit slowdown or contraction in the examined emerging countries, thus exacerbating liquidity constraints and negatively affecting real activity. This paper is relevant to the ongoing debate on the impact of the revision of bank CARs, as contemplated by the new Basel proposal. Our results suggest that in several emerging economies the revision of bank CARs could well induce a credit supply retrenchment, which should not be underestimated.     

Monetary policy and bank risk-taking: Evidence from the corporate loan market

Our study of the corporate loan pricing policies of U.S. banks over the past two decades shows that loan spreads for riskier firms become relatively lower during periods of monetary policy easing compared to tightening. This effect is driven by banks with greater risk appetite, measured from individual banks’ answers to the Senior Loan Officers Opinion Survey. Our results hold with different fixed effects that account for time-varying observed and unobserved heterogeneity of credit demand and bank lending conditions that are not directly related to monetary policy. Together with our survey-based measure of bank risk appetite, we provide compelling evidence of the presence of a bank risk-taking channel of monetary policy in the U.S.