IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_6649.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Do Banks and Households Manage Interest Rate Risk? Evidence from the Swiss Mortgage Market

Author

Listed:
  • Christoph Basten
  • Benjamin Guin
  • Cathérine Tahmee Koch

Abstract

We exploit a unique data set that features both un-intermediated mortgage requests and independent offers from multiple banks for each request. We show that households typically are not prudent risk managers but prioritize the minimization of current mortgage payments over the risk of possible hikes in future mortgage payments. We also provide evidence that banks do influence the contracted mortgage rate fixation periods, trading off their own exposure to interest rate risk against the borrowers’ affordability and credit risk. Our results challenge the implicit assumption of the existing mortgage choice literature whereby fixation periods are determined entirely by households.

Suggested Citation

  • Christoph Basten & Benjamin Guin & Cathérine Tahmee Koch, 2017. "How Do Banks and Households Manage Interest Rate Risk? Evidence from the Swiss Mortgage Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 6649, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6649
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6649.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beutler, Toni & Bichsel, Robert & Bruhin, Adrian & Danton, Jayson, 2020. "The impact of interest rate risk on bank lending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    2. Rampini, Adriano A. & Viswanathan, S. & Vuillemey, Guillaume, 2019. "Risk Management in Financial Institutions," CEPR Discussion Papers 13787, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. S. Viswanathan & Adriano Rampini, 2013. "Household risk management," 2013 Meeting Papers 647, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Koijen, Ralph S.J. & Hemert, Otto Van & Nieuwerburgh, Stijn Van, 2009. "Mortgage timing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 292-324, August.
    5. Christoph Basten & Catherine Koch, 2015. "Higher bank capital requirements and mortgage pricing: evidence from the Countercyclical Capital Buffer (CCB)," BIS Working Papers 511, Bank for International Settlements.
    6. Gomez, Matthieu & Landier, Augustin & Sraer, David & Thesmar, David, 2021. "Banks’ exposure to interest rate risk and the transmission of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 543-570.
    7. Ulrike Malmendier & Stefan Nagel, 2016. "Learning from Inflation Experiences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(1), pages 53-87.
    8. Purnanandam, Amiyatosh, 2007. "Interest rate derivatives at commercial banks: An empirical investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1769-1808, September.
    9. Margarita Rubio, 2011. "Fixed‐ and Variable‐Rate Mortgages, Business Cycles, and Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(4), pages 657-688, June.
    10. John Y. Campbell & João F. Cocco, 2015. "A Model of Mortgage Default," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1495-1554, August.
    11. Andreas Fuster & James Vickery, 2015. "Securitization and the Fixed-Rate Mortgage," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(1), pages 176-211.
    12. Christoph Basten, 2020. "Higher Bank Capital Requirements and Mortgage Pricing: Evidence from the Counter-Cyclical Capital Buffer," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 24(2), pages 453-495.
    13. Esposito, Lucia & Nobili, Andrea & Ropele, Tiziano, 2015. "The management of interest rate risk during the crisis: Evidence from Italian banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 486-504.
    14. Richard K. Green & Susan M. Wachter, 2005. "The American Mortgage in Historical and International Context," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 93-114, Fall.
    15. Ehrmann, Michael & Ziegelmeyer, Michael, 2014. "Household Risk Management and Actual Mortgage Choice in the Euro Area," MEA discussion paper series 201406, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    16. Raymond Chaudron, 2016. "Bank profitability and risk taking in a prolonged environment of low interest rates: a study of interest rate risk in the banking book of Dutch banks," DNB Working Papers 526, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph Memmel, 2020. "What drives the short‐term fluctuations of banks' exposure to interest rate risk?," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(4), pages 674-686, October.
    2. Albertazzi, Ugo & Fringuellotti, Fulvia & Ongena, Steven, 2024. "Fixed rate versus adjustable rate mortgages: Evidence from euro area banks," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    3. Jörg Clostermann & Franz Seitz, 2020. "Effektivverzinsung und Volatilität bei Finanzierung mit Zinsbindung und variablen Zinsen [Effective interest rates and volatility for fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortages]," Zeitschrift für Immobilienökonomie (German Journal of Real Estate Research), Springer;Gesellschaft für Immobilienwirtschaftliche Forschung e. V., vol. 6(1), pages 29-46, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlos Garriga & Finn E. Kydland & Roman Šustek, 2017. "Mortgages and Monetary Policy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(10), pages 3337-3375.
    2. Hancock, Diana & Passmore, Wayne, 2016. "Cost of funds indexed mortgage contracts with government-backed catastrophic insurance (COFI-Cats): A realistic alternative to the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 109-130.
    3. Finn E. Kydland & Peter Rupert & Roman Sustek, 2012. "Housing Dynamics over the Business Cycle," NBER Working Papers 18432, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Dancsik, Bálint, 2017. "Számít-e a devizahiteles múlt?. A lakáshitelkamatok rögzítéséről szóló döntés vizsgálata mikroszintű adatokon [Analysing the decision of fixing housing loan interest rates on micro-level data: does," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(10), pages 1030-1055.
    5. Malmendier, Ulrike M. & Botsch, Matthew J., 2020. "The Long Shadows of the Great Inflation: Evidence from Residential Mortgages," CEPR Discussion Papers 14934, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Guiso, Luigi & Pozzi, Andrea & Tsoy, Anton & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Mistrulli, Paolo Emilio, 2022. "The cost of steering in financial markets: Evidence from the mortgage market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1209-1226.
    7. Simone Auer & Maja Ganarin & Pascal Towbin, 2017. "International Banking and Cross-Border Effects of Regulation: Lessons from Switzerland," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 13(2), pages 65-93, March.
    8. Coulier, Lara & Pancaro, Cosimo & Reghezza, Alessio, 2024. "Are low interest rates firing back? Interest rate risk in the banking book and bank lending in a rising interest rate environment," Working Paper Series 2950, European Central Bank.
    9. Passmore, Stuart Wayne & von Hafften, Alexander H., 2020. "Financing affordable and sustainable homeownership with Fixed-COFI mortgages," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    10. Jörg Clostermann & Franz Seitz, 2020. "Effektivverzinsung und Volatilität bei Finanzierung mit Zinsbindung und variablen Zinsen [Effective interest rates and volatility for fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortages]," Zeitschrift für Immobilienökonomie (German Journal of Real Estate Research), Springer;Gesellschaft für Immobilienwirtschaftliche Forschung e. V., vol. 6(1), pages 29-46, April.
    11. Carlos Garriga & Finn E. Kydland & Roman Šustek, 2017. "Mortgages and Monetary Policy," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(10), pages 3337-3375.
    12. Luigi Infante & Stefano Piermattei & Raffaele Santioni & Bianca Sorvillo, 2020. "Diversifying away risks through derivatives: an analysis of the Italian banking system," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(2), pages 621-657, July.
    13. Matteo Benetton, 2017. "Lenders' Competition and Macro-prudential Regulation: A Model of the UK Mortgage Supermarket," 2017 Meeting Papers 1001, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Molyneux, Philip & Pancotto, Livia & Reghezza, Alessio & Rodriguez d'Acri, Costanza, 2022. "Interest rate risk and monetary policy normalisation in the euro area," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Matteo Benetton, 2021. "Leverage Regulation and Market Structure: A Structural Model of the U.K. Mortgage Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(6), pages 2997-3053, December.
    16. Ono, Arito & Uchida, Hirofumi & Udell, Gregory F. & Uesugi, Iichiro, 2021. "Lending pro-cyclicality and macroprudential policy: Evidence from Japanese LTV ratios," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    17. Sebastian Di Tella & Pablo Kurlat, 2021. "Why Are Banks Exposed to Monetary Policy?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 295-340, October.
    18. Salim Dehmej & Leonardo Gambacorta, 2019. "Macroprudential Policy in a Monetary Union," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 61(2), pages 195-212, June.
    19. John Y. Campbell, 2013. "Mortgage Market Design," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-33.
    20. Chen, David Xiao & Friedrich, Christian, 2023. "The countercyclical capital buffer and international bank lending: Evidence from Canada," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fixed-Rate Mortgage (FRM); Adjustable-Rate Mortgage (ARM); fixation period; maturity mismatch; interest rate risk; credit risk; duration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6649. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.