Interest Rate Pass-Through and Monetary Transmission in Asia

This study seeks to examine the effectiveness of interest rates transmission mechanism from money market rate into retail banking rate in several Asian countries. In particular, we intend to investigate the differences in the degree of pass-through from monetary policy rate into deposit and lending rates across countries and between the pre- and post-crisis of 1997. The study is carried out by running the Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) equations. The results suggest that the transmission rate from money market rate into deposit and lending rates is slow and sluggish across economies. There is no much difference between the pass-through rate into deposit and lending rates but the pass-through into deposit rate is slightly higher than that in lending rate. Most of the countries have slower adjustment rates after the crisis 1997, indicating low effectiveness of monetary policy, imperfect financial market and lower degree of financial integration if these economies. However, there is an exception for Malaysia.