Monetary policy and bank lending in a low interest rate environment: diminishing effectiveness?

Claudio Borio and Leonardo Gambacorta

No 612, BIS Working Papers from Bank for International Settlements

Abstract: This paper analyses the effectiveness of monetary policy on bank lending in a low interest rate environment. Based on a sample of 108 large international banks, our empirical analysis suggests that reductions in short-term interest rates are less effective in stimulating bank lending growth when rates reach a very low level. This result holds after controlling for business and financial cycle conditions and different bank-specific characteristics such as liquidity, capitalisation, funding costs, bank risk and income diversification. We find that the impact of low rates on the profitability of banks' traditional intermediation activity helps explain the subdued evolution of lending in the period 2010-14.

Keywords: bank lending; monetary transmission mechanisms; low interest rate environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cba, nep-mac and nep-mon
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (137)

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Journal Article: Monetary policy and bank lending in a low interest rate environment: Diminishing effectiveness? (2017)
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