Banks as Liquidity Providers: an Explanation for the Co-Existence of Lending and Deposit-Taking

54 Pages Posted: 23 Mar 1999 Last revised: 15 Apr 2024

See all articles by Anil K. Kashyap

Anil K. Kashyap

University of Chicago, Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Raghuram G. Rajan

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business; International Monetary Fund (IMF); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Jeremy C. Stein

Harvard University - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: February 1999

Abstract

This paper addresses the following question: what ties together the traditional commercial banking activities of deposit-taking and lending? We begin by observing that since banks often lend via commitments, or credit lines, their lending and deposit-taking may be two manifestations of the same primitive function: the provision of liquidity on demand. After all, once the decision to extend a line of credit has been made, it is really nothing more than a checking account with overdraft privileges. This observation leads us to argue that there will naturally be synergies between the two activities, to the extent that both require banks to hold large volumes of liquid assets (cash and securities) on their balance sheets: if deposit withdrawals and commitment takedowns are imperfectly correlated, the two activities can share any deadweight costs of holding the liquid assets. We develop this idea with a simple model, and then use a variety of data to test the model's empirical implications.

Suggested Citation

Kashyap, Anil K. and Rajan, Raghuram G. and Stein, Jeremy C., Banks as Liquidity Providers: an Explanation for the Co-Existence of Lending and Deposit-Taking (February 1999). NBER Working Paper No. w6962, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=151733

Anil K. Kashyap

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