Policy Pass-through Research Articles

More Tax, Less Refi? The Mortgage Interest Deduction and Monetary Policy Pass-Through

We study how the mortgage interest deduction (MID) affects refinancing. Households who deduct mortgage interest from their taxes face a lower post-tax mortgage rate, reducing the interest savings from refinancing net of taxes. We estimate the effect of the MID on refinancing using the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 as a natural experiment. The TCJA doubled the standard deduction, reducing MID uptake and value. We show that, following the TCJA, the refinancing rate amongst households who lose the MID increased by 25%. Our results suggest that reducing the MID may improve the pass-through of monetary policy when rates fall.

Oligopoly banking, risky investment, and monetary policy

Oligopolistic competition in the banking sector and risk in the real economy are important characteristics of many economies. We build a model of monetary policy transmission that incorporates these characteristics which allows us to analyze the long-run consequences of variations in the degree of banking competition. We show theoretically that various equilibrium cases can occur, and that the effect of monetary policy varies greatly across equilibrium cases. We calibrate the model to the U.S. economy in 2016-2019 and find that monetary policy pass-through is incomplete under imperfect competition. Further, we show that a decrease in the policy rate during the calibration period would have increased expected welfare, but also bank default probability.

Monetary Policy Pass-Through to Interest Rates: Stylized Facts from 30 European Countries

Monetary Policy Pass-Through to Interest Rates: Stylized Facts from 30 European Countries

Monetary policy pass-through after the LCR

After the implementation of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR), trading in the federal funds market, which generally has a relatively favorable LCR treatment, became more driven by market liquidity. As a result, we document that pass-through of the federal funds rate to other short-term interest rates strengthened.

Monetary policy transmission and policy coordination in China

We study the transmission of conventional monetary policy in China, focusing on the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy given the unique institutional set-up for macroeconomic policy making. Our results suggest some progress but also continued difficulties in the transmission of monetary policy. Similar to recent studies, we find evidence of monetary policy pass-through to interest rates. However, the impact of monetary policy measures that are not coordinated with fiscal policy is significantly weaker than that of coordinated measures. This suggests the need for further improvements to the interest-rate based framework.

Monetary Policy, Market Power, and SMEs

Monetary policy aims to affect corporate borrowing by influencing the marginal costs of firms, but its potency can be conditioned by the degree of market competition. We first identify conditions under which changes in marginal costs have different effects on credit constraints and output under different competitive environments, in a simple Cournot competition setting. We then exploit a monetary policy easing shock in the euro area to examine whether policy pass-through is conditioned by market structure. We show that small firms within less concentrated sectors experienced a larger reduction in credit constraints than similar firms in more concentrated sectors.

Money Market Disconnect

Abstract A repurchase agreement (repo) is a source of cash and collateral. We document that the money market is more segmented when the collateral motive prevails. Two crucial aspects of the central bank framework lead to this disconnect: banks’ access to the central bank’s deposit facility and assets’ eligibility for quantitative easing (QE). We show that repo rates lent by banks with access to the deposit facility and secured by QE eligible assets are more collateral-driven and disconnected from funding-based money market rates. Our results are relevant for different monetary policies and have suggestive implications for the monetary policy pass-through. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Monetary Policy and Birth Rates: The Effect of Mortgage Rate Pass-Through on Fertility

Abstract This paper examines whether monetary policy pass-through to mortgage interest rates affects household fertility decisions. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in households’ eligibility for a rate adjustment, coupled with the large reductions in the monetary policy rate that occurred during the Great Recession in the U.K. and U.S. We estimate that each one percentage point drop in the policy rate increased birth rates amongst households eligible for a rate adjustment by 3%. Our results provide new evidence on the nature of monetary policy transmission to households and suggest a new mechanism via which mortgage contract structures can affect both aggregate demand and supply.

Bank Concentration and Monetary Policy Pass-Through

Bank Concentration and Monetary Policy Pass-Through

Does sectoral loan portfolio composition matter for the monetary policy transmission?

Purpose ─ The paper empirically explores the conditioning role of loan portfolio diversification in the monetary policy pass-through via the bank lending and risk-taking channels. Methods ─ Data of Vietnamese commercial banks during 2007–2019 is employed to perform regression using the two-step system generalized method of moments in dynamic panel models. For robustness, we approach different choices of monetary policy indicators, ranging from interest-based tools to quantitative-based policy, and consider a rich set of sectoral exposure measures to proxy loan portfolio diversification. Findings ─ Lower interest rates or greater liquidity injection during monetary expansion may increase bank lending and bank risk, thus confirming the working of the bank lending and risk-taking channels of monetary policy transmission. Notably, the potency of these banking channels may be weakened for banks diversifying loan portfolios more into various economic sectors. Implication ─ The findings call for monetary authorities to concentrate on certain types of banks, depending on their loan portfolios when setting monetary policy. When managing banking supervision, banking supervisors should also acknowledge the tradeoff between bank lending and bank risk in response to monetary shocks. Originality ─ For the first time, this paper explores the conditional role of loan portfolio composition and thus further supports the recent upsurge in empirical studies highlighting the role of business models in monetary policy pass-through.

How Central Bank Digital Currency Design Choices Impact Monetary Policy Pass-Through and Market Composition

How Central Bank Digital Currency Design Choices Impact Monetary Policy Pass-Through and Market Composition

Bank Concentration and Monetary Policy Pass-Through

Bank Concentration and Monetary Policy Pass-Through

Monetary Policy Pass-through, Ownership and Crisis: How Robust is the Indian Evidence?

Employing disaggregated data for 2001–2016, this study investigates the lending and loan pricing behaviour of state-owned and domestic private banks in response to monetary policy. Three major findings emerge. First, although both the interest rate and the bank lending channels are relevant for monetary pass-through, there is a trade-off: the impact of the former is much higher than the latter, although it occurs with a significant lag. Second, domestic private banks have a far greater response to a monetary policy shock under the interest rate channel, whereas state-owned banks display a greater response under the bank-lending channel. And finally, state-owned banks cut back lending during periods of crises, although no such response is manifest in domestic private banks. JEL Codes: C23, D4, E43, E52, G21, L10

Industry heterogeneity in the risk-taking channel

We contend that industry heterogeneity in risk and financing has important implications for the passthrough of monetary policy to corporate loan spreads. Existing literature on the risk-taking channel shows that lax monetary policy induces bank risk-taking, and this implies that industries’ risk profiles might induce asymmetries in monetary policy passthrough. Using U.S. syndicated loans over 1984-2018, we examine industry heterogeneity in the potency of the risk-taking channel and assess how this heterogeneity affects firms’ performance. We find that a one percentage point decrease in the shadow rate increases loan cost by approximately 30 basis points in the mining-construction and manufacturing sectors. The effect is lower in the services and transportation-utilities industries, while it is insignificant in the trade and finance sectors. The identified differences in the potency of the risk-taking channel explain a significant part of the inferior firm performance of highly affected sectors in the year after loan origination.

Oligopoly Banking, Risky Investment, and Monetary Policy

Oligopolistic competition in the banking sector and risk in the real economy are important characteristics of developed economies, but have so far mostly been abstracted from in monetary economics. We build a dynamic general equilibrium model of monetary policy transmission that incorporates both of these features and document that including them leads to important insights in our understanding of the transmission mechanism. Various equilibrium cases can occur, and policies have differing effects in these cases. We calibrate the model to the U.S. economy in 2016-2019 in order to study how changes in the degree of banking competition or the policy rate would have affected equilibrium outcomes. We find that doubling banking competition would have increased welfare by 1.02\%, but at the cost of increasing the probability of bank default from 0.02\% to 0.44\%. We further find that the policy rate was set optimally to minimize the probability of bank default, but that a decrease in the policy rate by 1pp would have increased welfare by 0.40\%. We also show that bank profits are increasing in the policy rate, in particular when interest rates are low. Thus, a 1pp reduction in the policy rate would have reduced profits per bank by 35.5\% in our calibrated economy. Finally, we document that monetary policy pass-through is incomplete under imperfect competition in the banking sector, as a change in the policy rate by 1pp leads to a change of only 0.92pp in the loan rate, while pass-through to the deposit rate is nearly complete for rate increases, but almost zero for rate reductions due to the zero-lower bound.

On Interest-Bearing Central Bank Digital Currency with Heterogeneous Banks

We explore the implications of introducing an interest-bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) through commercial banks that differ in size. Banks of heterogeneous sizes offer different convenience properties to depositors, which the CBDC adopts. The large bank gives depositors a higher convenience value and hence possesses market power. The interest rate on CBDC puts a lower bound on banks’ deposit interest rates, which is particularly binding on the large bank. While a higher CBDC interest rate enhances monetary policy pass-through by raising deposit interest rates, it reduces the small bank's deposit market share and its lending volume. By contrast, a CBDC that delivers its own convenience value to users levels the playing field by shifting deposits and lending from the large bank to the small one, although it can enhance or reduce the transmission of monetary policy.

The Bank Entry Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission

We provide causal evidence of the deposits channel of monetary policy transmission in a new setting, but show that bank entry can reduce or even reverse the relationship between deposit market structure and monetary policy pass-through. We build a simple model of monetary policy transmission when deposit market structure is endogenous. In our model, expansionary monetary policy decreases bank funding costs and stimulates bank entry, which in turn stimulates aggregate credit provision. Using novel shocks to bank entry barriers, we confirm the model’s main predictions: the deposits channel exists, but local establishment and employment growth increase more in response to expansionary monetary policy when bank entry barriers are lower. Our results suggest that the deposits channel and the effects of expansionary monetary policy are tamed when bank entry costs are high, as is currently the case.

No Job, No Money, No Refi: Frictions to Refinancing in a Recession

ABSTRACTWe study how employment documentation requirements and out‐of‐pocket closing costs constrain mortgage refinancing. These frictions, which bind most severely during recessions, may significantly inhibit monetary policy pass‐through. To study their effects on refinancing, we exploit a Federal Housing Administration policy change that excluded unemployed borrowers from refinancing and increased others' out‐of‐pocket costs substantially. These changes dramatically reduced refinancing rates, particularly among the likely unemployed and those facing new out‐of‐pocket costs. Our results imply that unemployed and liquidity‐constrained borrowers have a high latent demand for refinancing. Cyclical variation in these factors may therefore affect both the aggregate and distributional consequences of monetary policy.

Consumption and Portfolio Rebalancing Response of Households to Monetary Policy: Evidence of the HANK Channel

This paper tests one specific monetary transmission mechanism through households: portfolio rebalancing. We use a unique panel dataset of household’s credit and debit card spending, ATM withdrawals, financial investments into risky assets such as mutual funds and equities, as well as bank deposits from a leading bank in India to study the impact of the monetary policy pass-through for term depositors. The difference-in-differences estimators show that when interest rate falls, households increase consumption by 2,095 rupees (30 USD) and risky investments by 20,728 rupees (300 USD) after the expiry of term deposits. The increase in risky investment is about 10 times as much as the increase in consumption, suggesting that savers rebalance their portfolio and “reach for yield” when interest rate falls, shifting from safe assets (bank deposits) to more risky assets (mutual funds and equities). We estimate the interest elasticity of consumption to be -1.02 and interest elasticity of risky investments to be -19.5. Furthermore, we find that the effects on consumption and risky investment are larger for households holding term deposits without automatic renewal feature. The consumption effect is larger for those with less liquid wealth and the portfolio rebalancing effect on risky investment is larger for those with more liquid wealth. These results highlight how the heterogeneity in contract design and household wealth affects the monetary policy pass-through.

COMPARISON OF THE PASS-THROUGH SPEED MODELS OF DIFFERENT MARKETS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE MARKETS OF MAINLAND CHINA AND TAIWAN

This paper adopted the Boone Indicator, developed by Boone et al. (2008) and Van Leuvensteijn et al. (2011; 2013), to investigate the influence of different pass-through spread models in the competition among banks in emerging markets. With the market share of banks as a dependent variable and marginal cost as an independent variable, this paper probed into the competition among banks regarding the loan market to determine whether competition on the loan interest rates of banks affected the pass-through of monetary policy-related interest rates. After analyzing approximately 5,657 entries of records of the banking industries in Taiwan and mainland China, this paper reached three significant conclusions: 1) the Boone Indicator Model pointed out that, competition in the banking market of mainland China was more intense than that of Taiwan; 2) empirical research based on the Interest Rate Spread Model indicated that the spread of mainland China was lower than that of Taiwan; 3) the Passthrough Speed Model implied that, the interest rate sensitivity of the market of mainland China was higher than that of the Taiwan market. The above results indicate that the influence of monetary policy pass-through on the interest rate of the market in mainland China is faster than in Taiwan.