This paper offers a simple theory of inefficiently lax financial regulation arising as an outcome of a democratic political process. Lax financial regulation encourages some banks to issue risky residential mortgages. In the event of an adverse aggregate housing shock, these banks fail. When...

This paper focuses on investigating the determinants of lending rates and interest rate spreads in Macedonia. In order to quantify the effect of various factors on lending rates and interest rate spreads during the 2001-2009 period, we use panel estimation techniques on a sample of commercial...

As the euro area has a predominantly bank-based financial system, changes in the composition and strength of banks’ balance sheets can have very sizeable implications for the transmission of monetary policy. This paper provides an overview of developments in banks’ balance sheets,...

Why do banks squeeze their lending activity? is an oft-repeated question during the times of financial crisis. This study examines an emerging economy’s banking system and contributes to the evolving body of literature on the topic by providing answers as to what causes the sluggish bank...

While Euro area interest rates were responding to accommodative monetary policy and decreasing throughout 2015-2019, in stark contrast, Lithuania's bank lending rates increased. Although the rates dropped slightly around the onset of the pandemic, they are still elevated and well above the EA...

Zombie firms may adversely impact healthy firms through several transmission channels. Besides real spillover effects on productivity or investment, zombies may also cause negative financial spillover effects, where zombies receive credit at more favourable conditions than healthy firms. We...

We show that the transmission of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent monetary policy tightening differs across banks depending on their level of excess reserves. Specifically, the net worth of reserve-rich banks may display a boost when the interest rate paid on reserves increases...

The funding mix of European firms is weighted heavily towards bank credit, which underscores the importance of efficient pass-through of monetary policy actions to lending rates faced by firms. Euro area pass-through has shifted from being relatively homogenous to being fragmented and incomplete...

We suggest that forward guidance, via publicly committing the central bank to future actions and creating associated expectations, fundamentally affects bank-lending decisions independently of other forms of monetary policy. To test this hypothesis, we build a forward guidance measure based on...

How do banks operate in a negative policy rate environment? Bank profitability is threatened by policy rate cuts in negative territory because the zero lower bound on retail deposit rates prevents banks from benefiting from cheaper deposit funding costs. Contrary to some earlier research, this...