The bank lending channel of monetary policy: identification and estimation using Portuguese micro bank data



Table 4

Main banks’ balance sheet items as a percentage of the total assets according to bank
according to bank capitalisation

6 most capitalised
banks

4 medium
capitalisation banks

8 less capitalised
banks

1992

1995

1998

1992

1995

1998

1992

1995

1998

Assets

Credit to private
non-financial

sector

43.7

41.9

39.9

42.4

37.3

41.3

42.3

36.5

35.6

Domestic money
market

2.9

2.9

0.9

2.6

4.1

6.9

1.7

2.4

3.6

Government
securities

10.6

10.6

2.3

19.0

12.3

6.1

21.8

15.4

5.6

Deposits in
foreign MFIs

10.7

15.1

12.7

5.8

16.6

12.7

4.8

11.7

8.4

Liabilities

Deposits of
private non-
financial sector

55.3

47.4

33.8

65.2

57.6

47.7

68.1

54.1

38.1

Domestic money
market

3.4

4.2

2.6

1.8

3.6

6.3

2.4

2.5

3.3

Capital

11.2

9.5

5.0

10.0

8.4

6.9

8.4

6.4

4.9

Deposits of
foreign MFIs

11.9

18.5

16.1

5.7

12.3

15.9

4.9

10.1

14.3

As we have seen the intensification of credit growth in 1998 is likely to be the result
of a progressively reduced exchange risk, which strongly reduced the “true” cost of
external financing, not captured by our available measure. For this reason we think that it
is not sensible to use data later than 1997 to test the existence and importance of the credit
channel, at the country level, for EU countries, because monetary policy was no longer set
at the country level and the funds available to the banks were also no longer defined at the
country level.

Of course this option further reduces the time dimension of our panel to eight years
of quarterly data, which may appear as a very short sample given the cointegration
approach followed in this paper. We notice however that in case of panel data the cross-
23



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