IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Monetary policy transparency and pass-through of retail interest rates

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Liu, Ming-Hua
  • Margaritis, Dimitri
  • Tourani-Rad, Alireza

Abstract

This paper examines the degree of pass-through and adjustment speed of retail interest rates in response to changes in benchmark market rates in New Zealand during the period 1994-2004. We consider the effects of policy transparency and financial structure of the monetary transmission mechanism. New Zealand is the first OECD country to adopt a full-fledged inflation targeting regime with specific accountability and transparency provisions. Policy transparency was further enhanced by a shift from quantity (settlement cash) to price (interest rate) operating targets in 1999. Using Phillips-Loretan estimates of cointegrating regressions we find complete long-term pass-through for some but not all retail rates. Our results also show that the introduction of the Official Cash Rate (OCR) increased the pass-through of floating and deposit rates but not fixed mortgage rates. In line with previous studies we find the immediate pass-through of market interest rates to bank retail rates to be incomplete. Although we find no statistical evidence for asymmetric response of retail rates to changes in market rates other than for business lending rates in the pre OCR period, differences in the magnitude of mean adjustment lags indicate that banks appear to pass on decreases to fixed mortgage rates faster. Overall, our results confirm that monetary policy rate has more influence on short-term interest rates and that increased transparency has lowered instrument volatility and enhanced the efficacy of policy.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-4266(07)00303-2
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Banking & Finance.

Volume (Year): 32 (2008)
Issue (Month): 4 (April)
Pages: 501-511

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:32:y:2008:i:4:p:501-511
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf

Keywords:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Scholnick, Barry, 1996. "Asymmetric adjustment of commercial bank interest rates: evidence from Malaysia and Singapore," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 485-496, June.
  2. Angeliki Kourelis & Carlo Cottarelli, 1994. "Financial Structure, Bank Lending Rates, and the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy," IMF Working Papers 94/39, International Monetary Fund.
  3. Barnhart, Scott W. & McNown, Robert & Wallace, Myles S., 1999. "Non-Informative Tests of the Unbiased Forward Exchange Rate," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(02), pages 265-291, June.
  4. Mester, Loretta J. & Saunders, Anthony, 1995. "When does the prime rate change?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 743-764, August.
  5. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1995. "Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 27-48, Fall.
  6. David Neumark & Steven A. Sharpe, 1992. "Market Structure and the Nature of Price Rigidity: Evidence from the Market for Consumer Deposits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(2), pages 657-680.
  7. Marco A. Espinosa-Vega & Alessandro Rebucci, 2004. "Retail Bank Interest Rate Pass-through: Is Chile Atypical?," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series,in: Luis Antonio Ahumada & J. Rodrigo Fuentes & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.), Banking Market Structure and Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 7, chapter 5, pages 147-182 Central Bank of Chile.
  8. Boris Hofmann & Paul Mizen, 2004. "Interest Rate Pass-Through and Monetary Transmission: Evidence from Individual Financial Institutions' Retail Rates," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 71, pages 99-123, 02.
  9. Jeremy C. Stein & Anil K. Kashyap, 2000. "What Do a Million Observations on Banks Say about the Transmission of Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 407-428, June.
  10. Banerjee, Anindya, et al, 1986. "Exploring Equilibrium Relationships in Econometrics through Static Models: Some Monte Carlo Evidence," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 48(3), pages 253-277, August.
  11. Carlo Cottarelli & Angeliki Kourelis, 1994. "Financial Structure, Bank Lending Rates, and the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 41(4), pages 587-623, December.
  12. Hannan, Timothy H & Berger, Allen N, 1991. "The Rigidity of Prices: Evidence from the Banking Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 938-945, September.
  13. Chong, Beng Soon & Liu, Ming-Hua & Shrestha, Keshab, 2006. "Monetary transmission via the administered interest rates channel," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 1467-1484, May.
  14. Anonymous, 1999. "Monetary policy implementation: changes to operating procedures," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 62, March.
  15. Kleimeier, Stefanie & Sander, Harald, 2006. "Expected versus unexpected monetary policy impulses and interest rate pass-through in euro-zone retail banking markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(7), pages 1839-1870, July.
  16. Nabar, Prafulla G & Park, Sang Yong & Saunders, Anthony, 1993. "Prime Rate Changes: Is There an Advantage in Being First?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(1), pages 69-92, January.
  17. Hendry, David F., 1995. "Dynamic Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198283164.
  18. Mojon, Benoît, 2000. "Financial structure and the interest rate channel of ECB monetary policy," Working Paper Series 0040, European Central Bank.
  19. Altunbas, Yener & Fazylov, Otabek & Molyneux, Philip, 2002. "Evidence on the bank lending channel in Europe," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(11), pages 2093-2110, November.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:32:y:2008:i:4:p:501-511. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.