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Bank Interest Rate Adjustments: Are They Asymmetric?
Author(s) -
Lim G.C.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
economic record
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.365
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1475-4932
pISSN - 0013-0249
DOI - 10.1111/1475-4932.00009
Subject(s) - economics , interest rate , loan , monetary economics , sample (material) , econometrics , floating interest rate , monetary policy , multivariate statistics , macroeconomics , statistics , mathematics , chemistry , chromatography
This paper is concerned with the asymmetric adjustments between three Australian bank interest rates: a bank bill rate, a loan rate and a deposit rate. A multivariate asymmetric error‐correction model is applied to capture the interplay of long‐run relationships between the levels of the rates and short‐run relationships between the changes in the rates. The empirical analysis, for the sample period 1990:01–2000:04, shows that interest rate adjustments, in response to positive and negative shocks, are asymmetric in the short run, but not in the long run. In particular, the results suggest that banks adjust their loan and deposit rates, in response to a change in the bank‐bill rate, at a faster rate during periods of monetary easings (negative changes) than during periods of monetary tightenings (positive changes).