Bank loan portfolios and the monetary transmission mechanism

Abstract

This paper investigates the portfolio behavior of bank loans following a monetary tightening. We find that real estate and consumer loans sharply decrease, while commercial and industrial (C&I) loans increase. We compare this behavior with the responses following non-monetary shocks, which also reduce output but keep interest rates roughly unchanged. During such a “non-monetary ” downturn, C&I loans sharply decrease, while real estate and consumer loans show no substantial response. These responses, together with the responses of relevant lending rates, are hard to reconcile with a decline in the supply of C&I bank loans during a monetary downturn as stressed by the bank-lending channel. Instead, we give several arguments why the supply of C&I loans may actually increase after a monetary contraction