An increase in the level of interest rates is said to have a negative impact on banks’ net interest margins in the short run. Using a time series of more than 40 years for the German banking system, we show that the opposite effect exists in the long run, where an increase in the level of...

Using unique data of a survey among small and medium-sized German banks, we analyze various aspects of risk management over a short-term and medium-term horizon. We especially analyze the effect of a 200-bp increase in the interest level. We find that, in the first year, the impairments of...

This paper explores the extent to which interest risk exposure is priced in bank margins. Our contribution to the literature is twofold: First, we present an extended model of Ho and Saunders (1981) that explicitly captures interest rate risk and returns from maturity transformation. Banks price...

We decompose the change in banks' net interest margin into a change in market-wide bank rates and a change in the balance-sheet composition. Our empirical findings from a detailed data set on German banks' balance-sheet positions, broken down into different maturities, creditors and borrowers...

Using unique data sets on German banks, we decompose their net interest margin and quantify the different components by estimating the costs of the various functions they perform. We investigate three major functions: namely, liquidity and payment management for the customers, the bearing of...

We use a unique dataset of German banks’ exposure to interest rate risk to derive the following statements about their exposure to this risk and their earnings from term transformation. The systematic factor for the exposure to interest rate risk moves in sync with the shape of the term...