Research on the transmission mechanism between the money market interest rates and the capital market interest rates

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the transmission mechanism between benchmark interest rate of financial market, money market interest rate and capital market yields in order to reveal the dynamic evolution characters and core influential structure between different market interest rates. Design/methodology/approach - Using Dirichlet-VAR (DVAR) model, this study analyze the relationship between markets rates according to the equilibrium model in money market and capital market. Findings - Empirical results show that the interest rate transmission mechanism functions smoothly between interest rates of different levels. Interest rate of bills issued by the central bank can effectively reflect changes in monetary policy and guide the fluidity of market, playing the anchor role in interest rate pricing. There exists a closed loop feedback between interest rate of bills issued by the central bank, and money market interest rate, as well as between money market interest rate and bond market interest rate. The former is a loop by administrative means while the latter is the one mainly affected by market-oriented means. The response by money market and bond market toward the change of benchmark interest rate is unsymmetrical as money market is more sensitive to a loose monetary policy while bond market is more sensitive to a tight monetary policy. Stock market is strongly affected by uncertainty of benchmark interest rate. Originality/value - DVAR model is the extension of research on instable data and multiple variable causality test, which expands the causality analysis between two variables to multiple variables causality impact analysis which contains non-stable and structurally instable economic data.