Using news-based government economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index of Baker et al. (2016) and bank-level data from 17 countries over the period 1998-2012, we find that government economic policy uncertainty has significant positive association with interest rates on bank gross loans....

Uncertainty in economic environment leads economic agents to act cautiously. In this paper, we postulate that such uncertainty leads banks to charge higher interest rate on loans. Measuring aggregate country-level economic uncertainty with the World Uncertainty Index (WUI) and using a bank-level...