The role of different dimensions of bank health on lending growth

An inverse and simultaneous change in financial depth and the interest rate have started from 1387 in the Iranian banking system. The phenomenon was coincident h a widespread decline in bank health indicators. Using the bank-level data from 1386 to 1392, in this study, we try to find a causal relationship between a bank's health and its lending power in line with lending channel literature. We quantify bank health as a multidimensional concept representing liquidity, nonperforming loans, capital, profitability, and debt to central bank ratios; and use bank sanctions as an exogenous shock to banks. Our findings show that loans grow faster in banks with higher liquidity and lower nonperforming loan ratios, such that a one percentage point in these ratios respectively changes loan growth rate by 0.04 and -0.05 percentage point on average. Additionally, we also show that the loan growth rate's sensibility to bank health indicators weakened after the sanctions' shock. Our results are robust to changes in the definition of regression variables, the set explanatory variables, and estimation methods.