U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles

Falk  Bräuning; Victoria  Ivashina

Article | Journal of Monetary Economics | June 2020

U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles

Abstract

Foreign banks’ lending to firms in emerging market economies (EMEs) is large and denominated predominantly in U.S. dollars. This creates a direct connection between U.S. monetary policy and EME credit cycles. We estimate that over a typical U.S. monetary easing cycle, EME borrowers experience a 32-percentage-point greater increase in the volume of loans issued by foreign banks than do borrowers from developed markets, with a similarly large effect upon reversal of the U.S. monetary policy stance. This result is robust across different geographic regions and industries and holds for U.S. and non-U.S. lenders, including those with little direct exposure to the U.S. economy. Local EME lenders do not offset the foreign bank capital flows; thus, U.S. monetary policy affects credit conditions for EME firms. We show that the spillover is stronger in higher-yielding and more financially open markets and for firms with a higher reliance on foreign bank credit.

Keywords: global business cycle; monetary policy; Reaching for yield; Money; Policy; Credit; Emerging Markets;

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Citation:

Bräuning, Falk, and Victoria Ivashina. "U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles." Journal of Monetary Economics 112 (June 2020): 57–76.

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U.S. Monetary Policy and Emerging Market Credit Cycles

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