Bank Competition, Agency Costs and the Performance of the Monetary Policy

This paper extends the general equilibrium literature on bank competition in order to evaluate its role on the performance of the monetary policy. A new formulation of a financial contract taking into consideration both market power by banks as well as costly state verification is proposed here. Numerical simulations with the model economy parameterized to the Brazilian case are performed. Two cases are examined: One in which the banking sector is perfectly competitive and the other one when banks have market power. The main conclusions of the paper are the following: (1) Greater competition in the loan market enhances the response of the real economy to an interest rate shock; (2) Increased competition and/or a more efficient verification technology reduce the reaction of both the default rate and of the bank interest spread to an interest rate shock; and (3) The influence of the verification technology in the economy's dynamic response is greater when banks operate under perfect competition.