Is Macroprudential Policy Instrument Blunt? Empirical Analysis Based on Japan's Experience from the 1970s to the 1990s

Abstract

Macroprudential instruments, especially sectoral instruments, are considered to be precise tools that work only in areas of concern. However, it has not yet been fully tested in practice whether they affect only the targeted sectors and do not have undesirable spillover effects on nontargeted sectors. To fill this gap, we empirically study the impact of an instrument called Quantitative Restriction (QR), a policy tool used in Japan in the 1990s to curb excessive land price rises by requiring banks to contain real estate lending. We use narrative records to construct QR shocks and estimate their impact using a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR). Our findings are summarized as follows. First, contractionary QR shocks reduced not only real estate lending and land prices, but also lending to other industries, putting downward pressure on the macroeconomy and lowering bank solvency. Second, industry groups and banks with balance sheets that were more exposed to changes in land prices and real estate transactions responded greater to these shocks, illustrating the role of balance sheet composition in spillovers and the importance of choosing the right timing for implementation following these shocks, suggesting that there may have been leakages through these institutions. Third, some nonbank financial institutions that were not required to report the loan results to the authorities did not reduce their lending following these shocks, which accords with the view that there were leakages through these institutions.