How do fiscal, monetary policies, and trade openness impact interest rates in India?

Abstract

This study assesses the role of monetary, fiscal factors, and trade openness causing variations of nominal and real interest rates in India for the deregulated regime. The autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration finds that deposit rate, lending rate, and real interest rate have long‐run associations with the monetary, fiscal policy instruments, and trade openness. The error correction model representation of the ARDL framework finds that the broad money supply negatively impacts the deposit rate and the real interest rate, while positive impacts of income on each of the three interest rates are noticed. The fiscal deficit has a significant short‐term negative impact on the deposit rate and has a positive impact on the real interest rate. The exchange rate and openness to trade lower interest rates. The econometric appraisal may be perceptive to keep interest rate in the desired trail through the judicious adjustments of the policy instruments and deficit management. The significant impact of openness to trade on interest rates is a critical issue that the macroeconomic policy may face more challenges.