IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/ijfiec/v30y2025i3p2450-2469.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Negative interest rate policy and bank risk‐taking: Search for yield or de‐leverage?

Author

Listed:
  • Wenjin Tang
  • Weichang Chen
  • Xiaorui Ma
  • Chengbo Fu

Abstract

Since 2012, many central banks have implemented negative interest rate policies (NIRPs). While two opposing hypotheses about the effectiveness of NIRPs have emerged in the academic: the “de‐leverage effect” and the “search‐for‐yield effect.” The long‐term use of NIRPs provides a rare and important setting to re‐examine the relationship between interest rates and bank risk‐taking. We conduct an empirical analysis by using commercial banks' data from 2007 to 2020 for 23 countries (19 eurozone countries plus Japan, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland), which had adopted NIRPs. It indicates that 1% reduction in the policy rate would reduce bank risk‐taking by 4.9%. This result is stronger after the NIRPs implemented. Our results support the “de‐leverage effect” under NIRPs. We next show that the “de‐leverage effect” is greater for banks with more diversified income, smaller size or under more competitive environment. The findings help to make the debates around NIRPs effectiveness clearer as well as support for the central banks to make more effective monetary policy decisions in different economic situations.

Suggested Citation

  • Wenjin Tang & Weichang Chen & Xiaorui Ma & Chengbo Fu, 2025. "Negative interest rate policy and bank risk‐taking: Search for yield or de‐leverage?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 2450-2469, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:ijfiec:v:30:y:2025:i:3:p:2450-2469
    DOI: 10.1002/ijfe.3024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.3024
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/ijfe.3024?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:ijfiec:v:30:y:2025:i:3:p:2450-2469. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1076-9307/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.