Bank Globalization and Monetary Policy Transmission in Small Open Economies

Abstract

This paper investigates how the openness of banking sector influences the transmission channels of home and foreign monetary policy shocks in small open economies. For the analysis, I construct a small open economy DSGE model enriched with a globalized banking sector. I consider two forms of bank globalization: international bank capital finance and foreign loan account import. By comparing the effect of each type of bank globalization on monetary policy transmission, the analysis delivers the following results. First, bank globalization leads to a significant attenuation of domestic monetary policy transmission. This is because, in response to home monetary shocks, banks' global activities allow them to maintain bank rates and demands on deposit to some extent compared to those in financial autarky. On the other hand, opening of the banking sector intensifies the impact of foreign interest rate shocks on the local bank activities. In addition to the conventional channel of international monetary transmission through interest-parity condition, global bank operation opens a new channel which makes bank rates more responsive to foreign monetary shock.