Evaluation of Monetary Policy in Emu Through Credit Channels Interconnectedness: Evidence Using BLS Data

Abstract

Credit channel(s) of the monetary policy transmission has not been debated much in the literature especially in the context of the European monetary union (EMU) and the apparent rising fragmentation of the previously much integrated European banking system. This discussion is even more important in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC) and the decade-long European debt crisis (EDC), a number of European countries have been experiencing. This paper attempts to investigate the interconnectedness of credit channels in policy transmission in the context of EMU using bank lending survey (BLS) data for a sample of eight European countries. One of the main contributions of this paper is to use BLS data for the entire 11 credit channels. We use principal component analysis (PCA) to investigate the impact of monetary policy on the interconnectedness structure of credit channels. PCA is conducted both for EMU across channels and sample countries. EFA-orthogonal vector rotation indicates a core versus periphery interconnectedness pattern. The results suggest that the household balance sheet channel, borrower cash flow channel and interest rate channel are the most divergent channels in EMU.