This dissertation was written by Christopher Weber during his time as a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich. It was handed in at the department of Economics at the LMU Munich in July 2016. The goal of the thesis is to...

We show that the cash-flow exposure of banks to interest rate risk, or income gap, affects the transmission of monetary policy shocks to bank lending and real activity. We first use a large panel of U.S. banks to show that the sensitivity of bank profits to interest rates increases significantly...

The negative interest rate policy (NIRP) has been in place in the euro area since June 2014. While the NIRP can provide additional monetary accommodation in the situation where the neutral rate of interest is most likely negative, there are also unintended consequences for banks’ profitability...