Low interest rates and risk incentives for banks with market power

Toni Whited, Yufeng Wu and Kairong Xiao

Journal of Monetary Economics, 2021, vol. 121, issue C, 155-174

Abstract: The interaction between interest rates and banks’ market power generates a motive for bank risk-taking. Low interest rates depress bank profits from the deposit market as competition from cash intensifies. Limited liability and the consequent low bank market value move banks closer to the convex region of their payoff function and thus lead to more risk-taking. We estimate a model that embodies this intuition. We find that when interest rates are low, over 10% of new loans exceed the number that would be optimal in a counterfactual world with no risk-taking incentives.

Keywords: Market power; Bank risk-taking; Liquidity regulation; Low interest rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E52 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393221000441
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:moneco:v:121:y:2021:i:c:p:155-174

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2021.04.006

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Monetary Economics is currently edited by R. G. King and C. I. Plosser

More articles in Journal of Monetary Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().