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Defined Terms and Documents
Price Stickiness
in Credit Cards
or
Sticky
or 'Stucky'
means when the
Overnight Cash Rate
goes up or down interest rates on Credit Cards are
often 'stuck' to the existing interest rate - much more so when the
Overnight Cash Rate
falls:
How
to capture the full extent of price stickiness in credit card interest rates?
- 2012 (Wollongong University)
extracts include:
-
Abstract: We present a new approach to evaluate the full extent
of price stickiness in credit card interest rates by modifying the existing asymmetric models
so that they can be adopted for testing both the amount and adjustment asymmetries as well
as the lagged dynamic inertia.
Consistent with similar studies, banks behave
asymmetrically in response to changes in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) target interest rate.
Rate rises are passed onto the consumer faster than rate cuts and the credit card interest rate
showed a very significant degree of downward rigidity. Based on the magnitude of the
pass-through parameters obtained from short-run dynamic models, rate rises had a full
one-to-one and instantaneous impact on credit card interest rates. However, in absolute terms
the short-run effects of rate cuts were not only less than half of the rate rises, but also
were delayed on average by three months.
-
"In the contemporary literature the asymmetric behaviour of
credit card interest rates could also be referred to as “rockets-and-feathers hypothesis”.
In a similar context, Bacon (1991) argued that gasoline prices “shoot up like rockets” in
response to a positive rise in oil prices and “float down like feathers” in response to a fall. Hannan and Berger (1991)...."
LOAN
RATE STICKINESS: THEORY AND EVIDENCE - RBA 1992
notes:
-
The rate on credit cards is found to be the most
sticky, followed by
personal loan rates, the housing loan rate and the small business overdraft
rate.
-
In contrast,
the rates on personal loans and credit cards do not appear to be
more flexible in the deregulated period.
RBA calls out banks on 'sticky' credit card interest rates
- SMH
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