Bank Loan Components and the Time-Varying Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks

Abstract

A robust finding for both small and large banks is that in response to a monetary tightening, real estate and consumer loans decrease while C&I loans increase. We also show that in a standard log-linear VAR the impulse response function of an aggregate variable is time-varying. The finding that loan components move in opposite directions and the property that the impulse response of total loans is time-varying explain why studies that use total loans have had such a hard time finding a robust response of bank loans to a monetary tightening.

Keywords: Small and large banks, VAR, impulse response functions

JEL Classification: E40