Broken transmission

破坏的传递机制

The European Central Bank has lost control of interest rates in Spain and Italy

在对抗欧元危机的过程中，欧洲央行起初能单纯借助短期利率调控经济活动，但现在欧洲央行已经丧失了对西班牙和意大利利率的掌控，政策性利率与实体经济利率之间的传递机制已经破坏。本文通过阐述伯南克、格特勒提出的“银行贷款渠道”理论原理和适用条件，分析了短期利率工具为何能起到作用，且为何到后期失灵，并简要阐述了英国的经验，指出欧洲央行可以英国为鉴。

WHEN interest rates are high savers are happy, but borrowers are not. When they fall, savers’ pain is debtors’ gain. It is a natural trade-off. But in the euro zone these days rates hurt everyone: they are low for depositors and high for borrowers. This is especially so in Italy and Spain, where the rates small firms pay to borrow are far above those set by the European Central Bank (ECB) and those paid to depositors. The link between the ECB’s “policy” rate and borrowing in the real economy is broken.

破坏的传递机制

The ECB had an easy start. It was able to rely on just one tool, its short-term interest rate. When the ECB lowered its rate by half a percentage point in 2003, firms’ borrowing rates fell by the same amount. When it tightened policy between 2005 and 2007, the pattern was the same. As the ECB rate went from 2% to 4%, firms’ borrowing rates rose from 4% to 6% (see left-hand chart). This predictable wedge between policy and market interest rates meant the ECB knew how its decisions would feed through to the interest rates that influence output and inflation.

利率水平较高时，存款者会比较乐意，借款者却会闷闷不乐；利率水平下降时，存款者的所失即借款者的所得，这是一种自然的平衡状态。但在欧元区，近日的利率水平已伤害到了每个人：对于存款者而言它很低，对于借款者而言它又很高。这一情况在意大利和西班牙表现尤甚，在这两个国家，小型企业为借款承担的利率远高于欧洲央行（ECB）设定的水平，也远高于存款者享有的水平。欧洲央行的“政策性”利率和实体经济中贷款利率之间的联系已被破坏。

It also had a fair idea why its policies influenced economic activity as they did. The precise “transmission mechanism” had not always been clear: the Federal Reserve and Bank of England had been using short-term interest rates as a policy tool for years, and economists noticed that the timing and size of interest-rate influence could not be pinned solely on consumption, investment or exchange rates. The mysterious missing link was what Ben Bernanke, then of Princeton University and now the Fed’s chairman, and Mark Gertler of New York University called a “black box” in a 1995 paper*. Economists generally assume that higher prices reduce demand but raise supply. Messrs Bernanke and Gertler observed that when rates rise, credit supply might fall. One “channel” through which this happens is the supply of bank lending.

起初欧洲央行还算顺利，它可以仅依赖于一种工具——短期利率。2003年欧洲央行把利率下调了0.5个百分点时，企业的贷款利率也下降了相同百分点；2005-2007年间欧洲央行收紧经济政策时，也产生了（与2003年）相同的效果。随着欧洲央行利率从2%上升到4%，企业贷款利率也从4%上升到6%（见左图）。政策性利率与市场利率之间的这种可预测的联系表明，欧洲央行能够把握，它的决策将如何传递到影响产量和通胀水平的利率上。

The bank-lending channel works as follows. When a central bank raises interest rates, the return on government bonds rises. Banks lose deposits as customers buy bonds. To plug the gap banks switch to another source of funding—borrowing in wholesale markets—that is more costly. As their own costs rise, banks’ loans become scarcer, dearer or both. This slows the economy by raising financing costs for bank-dependent borrowers. The whole process works in reverse when central banks cut rates.

欧洲央行的政策为何一经实施就能影响到经济活动，其原因相当清楚。精确的“传递机制”并非总是清晰可见：美联储和英国央行已多年把短期利率当成一种政策工具使用，经济学家也注意到，利率的影响时点和影响范围并不能单独归因于消费、投资或汇率。时任普林斯顿大学教授、现任美联储主席本·伯南克和纽约大学的马克·格特勒在1995年的论文中，把这种神秘且缺失的联系称为“黑箱”。通常经济学家们会假设，价格提高会减少需求但增加供给。伯南克和格特勒两位先生观察到，利率上升时，信贷供给却可能下降。银行贷款的供给即是这种情况可能发生的“渠道”之一。

The bank-lending channel would not hold in all cases, Messrs Bernanke and Gertler pointed out. Since it works because banks’ funding costs rise as they take on more wholesale debt, it is only relevant for banks that have a shortfall of customer deposits. Asian banks, which have more deposits than loans, are poor candidates. And it will be important only in countries where firms are dependent on bank borrowing. If firms can get financing via the capital markets the channel will be much weaker.

银行贷款渠道的运行原理如下：一国央行提升利率水平时，政府债券回报率将上升，由于客户们纷纷购买债券，银行将失去存款。为堵住缺口，银行会转向另一资金来源——从批发融资市场借款，但这一来源的成本更高。随着自身成本上升，银行贷款变得更为稀少、更为昂贵或二者皆具。这一状况使得依赖银行的借款者的融资成本上升，因此拉缓经济发展。当一国央行削减利率时，上述过程按相反方向运行。

Those conditions describe the euro area perfectly. Its banks make more loans than the cash they collect as deposits. The resulting gaps are filled by wholesale funding. A recent IMF analysis shows the gaps are large, around 40% of the total funding for peripheral countries. It is also an economic area in which small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are crucial. They account for between 60% and 80% of employment, according to a recent study by the OECD, an intergovernmental think-tank. The euro zone is bank-dependent and its banks are reliant on market funding. Finance in Britain works in a similar way.

伯南克和格特勒两位先生还指出，银行贷款渠道并非对所有情况都适用。银行因承担更多的批发债务导致融资成本上升，此时银行贷款渠道才得以运行，鉴于此，该机制仅与那些有着存款缺口的银行相关。存款量超过贷款量的各亚洲银行就不适用。而且，该机制也将仅对那些企业依靠银行贷款（进行融资）的国家显得比较重要。如果企业能通过资本市场进行融资，银行贷款渠道（的效应）将显著减弱。

When the euro crisis intensified in 2010, the ECB’s influence on interest rates in Spain and Italy waned even further. Banks’ bond yields rose in line with their governments’ cost of borrowing. As predicted by the bank-lending channel, but now as a result of a change that the ECB did not control, the supply of loans contracted. The amount of borrowing in Italy and Spain has started to fall again (see right-hand chart). Some of this may be due to weak demand. But a 2011 study by the ECB suggested that tight credit conditions could take two percentage points off annual growth in the currency area. Recent studies by the IMF and the Bank of Italy concur: credit supply is a big problem.

上述（银行贷款渠道适用的）情况能完美描述欧元区的状况。欧元区各银行放贷数量超过了吸收的存款现金数，因此产生的缺口就由批发融资来填补。近期一份国际货币基金组织的分析结果显示，边缘国家的缺口很大，约占融资总额的40%。而且在欧元区，中小企业（SMEs）十分重要，据政府间智囊团经济合作与发展组织（OECD）的近期研究结果，这些中小企业支撑了60%-80%的就业率。欧元区依赖银行融资，各银行又依赖资本市场融资。英国融资情况与此类似。

Britain’s experience is so similar that it provides ideas the ECB can use. The Bank of England’s policy rate has been 0.5% since 2009, yet SME borrowing costs have been high and business lending has contracted. Since studies showed that tight loan supply was partly to blame, a new tool, the Funding for Lending scheme (FLS), was created in 2012. Banks first swap their assets, including bundles of SME loans, with the central bank. In return they get ultra-safe treasury bills. Banks can then offer this good collateral as security when they borrow. Because the bank’s creditor gets the safe assets if the bank defaults, this form of funding is cheap.

这就解释了为何（欧洲）各国央行的常用工具如此有效。但它同时解释了为何这些工具也可能根本不起作用。2008年，欧元区开始萎缩，欧洲央行把主要利率从4.25%大幅削减到1%。但由于投资者担心银行的状况，银行需为自身债券提供的回报率上升。此举抵消了欧洲央行的宽松政策效应，因此企业的贷款利率下降程度低于正常水平。

Since SME lending attracts higher capital charges than mortgage lending, there is a risk that cheap funding will flow to home buyers but not firms. To ensure that its assistance hits the right spot, the FLS scheme was tweaked in April to target funding support to banks that increase net SME lending. The ECB was expected to cut interest rates again at its meeting on May 2nd, after The Economist had gone to press. If it went further and followed the FLS example, it would be controlling the bank-lending channel at both ends: directly setting banks’ wholesale-funding costs and influencing where credit flows. Such measures are extraordinary, but they may be needed to make interest rates work again.

2010年欧元危机加剧之时，欧洲央行对于西班牙和意大利利率的影响程度进一步减弱。银行债券收益率与两国政府的借款成本同步上升。贷款供应缩减，这一情况符合银行贷款渠道理论的预测，但现在欧洲央行无法掌控导致该情况的形势变化。意大利和西班牙国内的借款数量已开始再一次下降（见右图）。这某些程度上可能归因于需求的疲软，但欧洲央行于2011年的研究结果表明，紧缩的信贷环境可能把欧元区年增长率拉低2个百分点。国际货币基金组织与意大利央行近期研究结果一致：信贷供应是个大问题。

"Understanding the weakness in bank lending", Bank of England, 2010

英国之鉴

(contract bridge) the highest bid becomes the contract setting the number of tricks that the bidder must make;

英国的经历十分类似，它能提供思路供欧洲央行借鉴。2009年以来英国央行政策性利率已降至0.5%，但中小企业贷款成本已处于较高水平，商业贷款已经缩减。由于研究结果显示，紧缩的贷款供给（应对此）负有一定责任，故2012年“贷款融资计划”（FLS）这一新型工具应运而生。银行首先与央行互换包括一揽子中小企业贷款在内的资产，作为回报，它们获得极为安全的国债；然后银行可以在借款时能把这种优良抵押物进行抵押。因为一旦银行违约，其债主能得到安全资产，所以这种融资形式成本低廉。

a variety of bridge in which the bidder receives points toward game only for the number of tricks he bid;

由于中小企业贷款吸引的资本费用比抵押贷款更高，会有如下风险：廉价资金将流向购房者而非企业。为确保其援助效应直击要害，4月FLS进行了微调，以使得资金支持对准那些中小贷款净额增加的银行。在5月2日（本刊已付印之后）的会议上，欧洲央行有望再次削减利率。如果欧洲央行采取进一步措施并也采用FLS模式，它将从两端控制银行借款渠道：直接限定银行批发借款成本，并影响贷款额的流向。这些手段并非常规，但可能要靠它们来使利率重新发挥效力。

become smaller or draw together;

From the print edition| Finance and economics 译者：王津雨