Negative interest rate policy and bank risk-taking: Search for yield or de-leverage?

Since 2012, many central banks have implemented negative interest rate policies (NIRPs). While two opposing hypotheses about the effectiveness of NIRPs have emerged in the academic: the "de-leverage effect" and the "search-for-yield effect." The long-term use of NIRPs provides a rare and important setting to re-examine the relationship between interest rates and bank risk-taking. We conduct an empirical analysis by using commercial banks' data from 2007 to 2020 for 23 countries (19 eurozone countries plus Japan, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland), which had adopted NIRPs. It indicates that 1% reduction in the policy rate would reduce bank risk-taking by 4.9%. This result is stronger after the NIRPs implemented. Our results support the "de-leverage effect" under NIRPs. We next show that the "de-leverage effect" is greater for banks with more diversified income, smaller size or under more competitive environment. The findings help to make the debates around NIRPs effectiveness clearer as well as support for the central banks to make more effective monetary policy decisions in different economic situations.