We study excess liquidity in the banking system using data for India during 2005–2020. We apply Autoregressive Distributed Lag model and panel regressions to identify the factors determining excess liquidity at both aggregate and bank levels. We find that required reserves, private sector credit, and government securities held by banks have negative, positive, and negative effects on excess liquidity, respectively. Other factors such as exchange rate and inter-bank call rate have varying effects at the two levels. Our results suggest that banks can chalk out mechanisms to optimize their liquidity management and avoid the cost of excess liquidity. JEL Classification: C23, E50, E58, G00, G21

In this paper, we examine the effect of monetary policy on liquidity creation (LC) by banks in India. We also study the role of bank characteristics in the transmission of monetary policy to LC. We apply static and dynamic panel regressions to bank‐level data from India, spanning the period 1999–2020. We find a negative impact of monetary policy tightening on total as well as on‐balance sheet LC. We also find that the capital, size and profit of banks support the monetary policy transmission to LC. Finally, the LC channel seems to operate for both public sector and private sector banks. Our findings suggest that the monetary policy authority must closely monitor bank‐level characteristics to improve the efficacy of the LC channel of monetary policy.

Authors examine the role of economic freedom in explaining the spillover of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. Authors extend the analysis to the roles of human capital and financial institutions in the FDI–growth nexus. Authors employ two-stage least squares regression to analyse a panel data set of ASEAN countries over 26 years. They find that the positive relationship between FDI and economic growth can be explained by higher economic freedom along with improvements in the quality of human capital and financial institutions. They also provide the policy implications of our findings. JEL Classification: F20; F21; O40

The role of bank liquidity in monetary policy transmission has received insufficient attention in the literature. Faced with monetary tightening, banks with more liquidity can sell off securities and protect their loan portfolios. We test this proposition using panel data for Indian banks during 2005–2020. Employing dynamic threshold panel regressions with liquid assets as the threshold variable, we show that bank lending declines with monetary policy tightening in low liquidity regimes, but not in high liquidity regimes. We also find evidence for different portfolio reallocation behaviour by banks in high versus low liquidity regimes in response to monetary policy changes.

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