The trade-off between monetary policy and bank stability. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 308, October 2016

This paper investigates how monetary policy interventions by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve affect the stock market perception of bank systemic risk. In a first step, we identify monetary policy shocks using a structural VAR approach by exploiting the changes of the volatility of these shocks on days on which there are monetary policy announcements. The second step consists of a panel regression analysis, in which we relate monetary policy shocks to market-based measures of bank systemic risk. Our sample includes information on both Euro Area and U.S. listed banks, covering a sample period from October 2008 to December 2015. We condition the impact of the monetary policy shocks on a set of bank-specific variables, thereby allowing for a heterogeneous transmission of monetary policy. We furthermore use the differences between Euro Area core and periphery countries and the additional granularity of U.S. accounting data to assess which channels determine the transmission of monetary policy. Our results indicate that by supporting weaker banks and allowing banks to delay recognizing bad loans, accommodative monetary policy may contribute to the buildup of vulnerabilities in the banking sector and may make an eventual policy tightening more difficult. On the other hand, a continuation of expansionary monetary policy may increase risk-taking incentives by further compressing banks’ net interest margins

The trade-off between monetary policy and bank stability

This paper investigates the transmission of monetary policy to systemic risk of euro-area and U.S. banks between 2008 and 2015. Using market measures of systemic risk and a VAR to obtain monetary policy shocks, we find that accommodative policy generally has a positive effect on bank stability in the euro area but a negative effect in the United States. Different transmission channels are at play: in the euro area the effect works mainly through a stealth recapitalization channel, while in the United States the effect is due to risk-shifting. Moreover, transmission of monetary policy differs across bank business models

The trade-off between monetary policy and bank stability

This paper investigates how monetary policy interventions by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve affect the stock market perception of bank systemic risk. In a first step, we identify monetary policy shocks using a structural VAR approach by exploiting the changes of the volatility of these shocks on days on which there are monetary policy announcements. The second step consists of a panel regression analysis, in which we relate monetary policy shocks to market-based measures of bank systemic risk. Our sample includes information on both Euro Area and U.S. listed banks, covering a sample period from October 2008 to December 2015. We condition the impact of the monetary policy shocks on a set of bank-specific variables, thereby allowing for a heterogeneous transmission of monetary policy. We furthermore use the differences between Euro Area core and periphery countries and the additional granularity of U.S. accounting data to assess which channels determine the transmission of monetary policy. Our results indicate that by supporting weaker banks and allowing banks to delay recognizing bad loans, accommodative monetary policy may contribute to the buildup of vulnerabilities in the banking sector and may make an eventual policy tightening more difficult. On the other hand, a continuation of expansionary monetary policy may increase risk-taking incentives by further compressing banks’ net interest margins