IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/drm/wpaper/2020-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary Policy Transmission with Downward Interest Rate Rigidity

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Guillaume Sahuc
  • Grégory Levieuge

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that the pass-through from policy to retail bank rates is asymmetric in the euro area. Bank lending rates adjust more slowly and less completely to Eonia decreases than to increases. We investigate how this downward interest rate rigidity affects the response of the economy to monetary policy shocks. To this end, we introduce asymmetric bank lending rate adjustment costs in a macrofinance dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. We find that the initial response of GDP to a negative monetary policy shock is 25% lower than its response to a positive shock of similar amplitude. This implies that a central bank would have to decrease its policy rate by 50% to 75% more to obtain a medium-run impact on GDP that would be symmetric to the impact of the positive shock. We also show that downward interest rate rigidity is stronger when policy rates are stuck at their effective lower bound, further disrupting monetary policy transmission. These findings imply that neglecting asymmetry in retail interest rate adjustments may yield misguided monetary policy decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Guillaume Sahuc & Grégory Levieuge, 2020. "Monetary Policy Transmission with Downward Interest Rate Rigidity," EconomiX Working Papers 2020-6, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
  • Handle: RePEc:drm:wpaper:2020-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economix.fr/pdf/dt/2020/WP_EcoX_2020-6.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lemke, Wolfgang & Vladu, Andreea L., 2016. "Below the zero lower bound: A shadow-rate term structure model for the euro area," Discussion Papers 32/2016, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    2. Justiniano, Alejandro & Primiceri, Giorgio E. & Tambalotti, Andrea, 2010. "Investment shocks and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 132-145, March.
    3. Paul Klemperer, 1995. "Competition when Consumers have Switching Costs: An Overview with Applications to Industrial Organization, Macroeconomics, and International Trade," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(4), pages 515-539.
    4. Jing Cynthia Wu & Fan Dora Xia, 2016. "Measuring the Macroeconomic Impact of Monetary Policy at the Zero Lower Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 253-291, March.
    5. Berger, Allen N & Hannan, Timothy H, 1989. "The Price-Concentration Relationship in Banking," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(2), pages 291-299, May.
    6. Abbritti, Mirko & Fahr, Stephan, 2013. "Downward wage rigidity and business cycle asymmetries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 871-886.
    7. Florian Heider & Farzad Saidi & Glenn Schepens, 2019. "Life below Zero: Bank Lending under Negative Policy Rates," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(10), pages 3728-3761.
    8. Belke, Ansgar & Beckmann, Joscha & Verheyen, Florian, 2013. "Interest rate pass-through in the EMU – New evidence from nonlinear cointegration techniques for fully harmonized data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-24.
    9. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393, Elsevier.
    10. Silvana Tenreyro & Gregory Thwaites, 2016. "Pushing on a String: US Monetary Policy Is Less Powerful in Recessions," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 43-74, October.
    11. Carlstrom, Charles T & Fuerst, Timothy S, 1997. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 893-910, December.
    12. Bruce E. Hansen, 2000. "Sample Splitting and Threshold Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(3), pages 575-604, May.
    13. Charles T. Carlstrom & Timothy S. Fuerst & Matthias Paustian, 2017. "Targeting Long Rates in a Model with Segmented Markets," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 205-242, January.
    14. Mester, Loretta J. & Saunders, Anthony, 1995. "When does the prime rate change?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 743-764, August.
    15. Joseph Abadi & Markus Brunnermeier & Yann Koby, 2023. "The Reversal Interest Rate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(8), pages 2084-2120, August.
    16. J. Bradford DeLong & Lawrence H. Summers, 1988. "How Does Macroeconomic Policy Affect Output?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(2), pages 433-494.
    17. Matteo Iacoviello & Stefano Neri, 2010. "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 125-164, April.
    18. Hansen, Bruce E, 1996. "Inference When a Nuisance Parameter Is Not Identified under the Null Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(2), pages 413-430, March.
    19. Andrea Gerali & Stefano Neri & Luca Sessa & Federico M. Signoretti, 2010. "Credit and Banking in a DSGE Model of the Euro Area," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(s1), pages 107-141, September.
    20. Matteo Iacoviello, 2005. "House Prices, Borrowing Constraints, and Monetary Policy in the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 739-764, June.
    21. Stephan Fahr & Frank Smets, 2010. "Downward Wage Rigidities and Optimal Monetary Policy in a Monetary Union," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(4), pages 812-840, December.
    22. Frank Smets & Rafael Wouters, 2007. "Shocks and Frictions in US Business Cycles: A Bayesian DSGE Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 586-606, June.
    23. Sarah Mouabbi & Jean‐Guillaume Sahuc, 2019. "Evaluating the Macroeconomic Effects of the ECB's Unconventional Monetary Policies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(4), pages 831-858, June.
    24. Zohair Alam & Mr. Adrian Alter & Jesse Eiseman & Mr. Gaston Gelos & Mr. Heedon Kang & Mr. Machiko Narita & Erlend Nier & Naixi Wang, 2019. "Digging Deeper--Evidence on the Effects of Macroprudential Policies from a New Database," IMF Working Papers 2019/066, International Monetary Fund.
    25. Ausubel, Lawrence M, 1991. "The Failure of Competition in the Credit Card Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 50-81, March.
    26. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Ragnar E. Juelsrud & Lawrence H. Summers & Ella Getz Wold, 2019. "Negative nominal interest rates and the bank lending channel," Working Paper 2019/4, Norges Bank.
    27. Sander, Harald & Kleimeier, Stefanie, 2004. "Convergence in euro-zone retail banking? What interest rate pass-through tells us about monetary policy transmission, competition and integration," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 461-492, April.
    28. Rotemberg, Julio J & Saloner, Garth, 1987. "The Relative Rigidity of Monopoly Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 917-926, December.
    29. Amzallag, Adrien & Calza, Alessandro & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Sousa, João, 2019. "Monetary policy transmission to mortgages in a negative interest rate environment," Working Paper Series 2243, European Central Bank.
    30. Hartmann, Philipp & Smets, Frank, 2018. "The first twenty years of the European Central Bank: monetary policy," Working Paper Series 2219, European Central Bank.
    31. Rostagno, Massimo & Altavilla, Carlo & Carboni, Giacomo & Lemke, Wolfgang & Motto, Roberto & Saint Guilhem, Arthur & Yiangou, Jonathan, 2019. "A tale of two decades: the ECB’s monetary policy at 20," Working Paper Series 2346, European Central Bank.
    32. Kim, Jinill & Ruge-Murcia, Francisco J., 2009. "How much inflation is necessary to grease the wheels?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 365-377, April.
    33. Berger, Allen N & Udell, Gregory F, 1992. "Some Evidence on the Empirical Significance of Credit Rationing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 1047-1077, October.
    34. repec:fth:harver:1418 is not listed on IDEAS
    35. Santoro, Emiliano & Petrella, Ivan & Pfajfar, Damjan & Gaffeo, Edoardo, 2014. "Loss aversion and the asymmetric transmission of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 19-36.
    36. Kwapil, Claudia & Scharler, Johann, 2010. "Interest rate pass-through, monetary policy rules and macroeconomic stability," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 236-251, March.
    37. Régis Barnichon & Christian Matthes & Timothy Sablik, 2017. "Are the Effects of Monetary Policy Asymmetric?," Richmond Fed Economic Brief, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue March.
    38. James Peery Cover, 1992. "Asymmetric Effects of Positive and Negative Money-Supply Shocks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(4), pages 1261-1282.
    39. Mojon, Benoît, 2000. "Financial structure and the interest rate channel of ECB monetary policy," Working Paper Series 40, European Central Bank.
    40. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2016_019 is not listed on IDEAS
    41. Gertler, Mark & Karadi, Peter, 2011. "A model of unconventional monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 17-34, January.
    42. Darracq Pariès, Matthieu & Fahr, Stephan & Kok, Christoffer, 2019. "Macroprudential space and current policy trade-offs in the euro area," Financial Stability Review, European Central Bank, vol. 1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Christian Pfister & Jean-Guillaume Sahuc, 2020. "Unconventional monetary policies: A stock-taking exercise," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 130(2), pages 137-169.
    2. Henry Penikas, 2023. "Smoothing the Key Rate Pass-Through: What to Keep in Mind When Interpreting Econometric Estimates," Russian Journal of Money and Finance, Bank of Russia, vol. 82(3), pages 3-34, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Levieuge, Grégory & Sahuc, Jean-Guillaume, 2021. "Downward interest rate rigidity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    2. Albertazzi, Ugo & Barbiero, Francesca & Marqués-Ibáñez, David & Popov, Alexander & Rodriguez d’Acri, Costanza & Vlassopoulos, Thomas, 2020. "Monetary policy and bank stability: the analytical toolbox reviewed," Working Paper Series 2377, European Central Bank.
    3. Zhang, Yahong, 2019. "Household debt, financial intermediation, and monetary policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 230-257.
    4. Kumhof, Michael & Wang, Xuan, 2021. "Banks, money, and the zero lower bound on deposit rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    5. Matthieu Darracq Paries, 2018. "Financial frictions and monetary policy conduct," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph18-01 edited by Ferhat Mihoubi, December.
    6. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    7. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Mathias Trabandt, 2018. "On DSGE Models," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 113-140, Summer.
    8. Sami Alpanda & Gino Cateau & Césaire Meh, 2018. "A policy model to analyze macroprudential regulations and monetary policy," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(3), pages 828-863, August.
    9. Böhl, Gregor & Strobel, Felix, 2020. "US business cycle dynamics at the zero lower bound," IMFS Working Paper Series 143, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    10. Thomas Drechsel, 2023. "Earnings-Based Borrowing Constraints and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 1-34, April.
    11. Michał Brzoza‐Brzezina & Marcin Kolasa, 2013. "Bayesian Evaluation of DSGE Models with Financial Frictions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(8), pages 1451-1476, December.
    12. Nicoletta Batini & Alessandro Cantelmo & Giovanni Melina & Stefania Villa, 2021. "How loose, how tight? A measure of monetary and fiscal stance for the euro area," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 1536-1556.
    13. Christian Pfister & Jean-Guillaume Sahuc, 2020. "Unconventional monetary policies: A stock-taking exercise," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 130(2), pages 137-169.
    14. Alexander Doser & Ricardo Nunes & Nikhil Rao & Viacheslav Sheremirov, 2023. "Inflation expectations and nonlinearities in the Phillips curve," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 453-471, June.
    15. Yépez, Carlos A., 2018. "Financial intermediation and real estate prices impact on business cycles: A Bayesian analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 138-160.
    16. Andrea Silvestrini & Andrea Zaghini, 2015. "Financial shocks and the real economy in a nonlinear world: a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 255, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    17. Rostagno, Massimo & Altavilla, Carlo & Carboni, Giacomo & Lemke, Wolfgang & Motto, Roberto & Saint Guilhem, Arthur & Yiangou, Jonathan, 2019. "A tale of two decades: the ECB’s monetary policy at 20," Working Paper Series 2346, European Central Bank.
    18. Joscha Beckmann & Klaus-Jürgen Gern & Nils Jannsen, 2022. "Should they stay or should they go? Negative interest rate policies under review," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 885-912, October.
    19. Caterina Mendicino & Kalin Nikolov & Javier Suarez & Dominik Supera, 2018. "Optimal Dynamic Capital Requirements," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(6), pages 1271-1297, September.
    20. de Groot, Oliver & Haas, Alexander, 2023. "The signalling channel of negative interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 87-103.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Downward interest rate rigidity; asymmetric adjustment costs; banking sector; DSGE model; euro area.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:drm:wpaper:2020-6. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: Valerie Mignon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/modemfr.html .

    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.