The Impact of Monetary Policy on Financing of Czech Firms

This paper uses firm-level financial data for Czech firms in the period from 2003 to 2011 and tests for the role of companies' financial structure in the transmission of monetary policy. Our results indicate that higher short-term interest rates coincide with lower shares of total debt and long-term debt and higher shares of short-term bank loans and trade credit. We find that firm-specific characteristics, such as size, age, collateral and profit affect the way monetary policy influences the external financing decisions of firms. These findings indicate the presence of informational frictions in credit markets and thus provide some empirical evidence of the existence of a broad credit channel in the Czech Republic