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Fabrizio Core, Filippo De Marco, Tim Eisert,Glenn Schepens Challenges for Monetary Policy Transmission in a Changing World Network (ChaMP)This paper contains research conducted within the network “Challenges for Monetary Policy Transmission in a Changing WorldNetwork” (ChaMP). It consists of economists from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the national central banks (NCBs) of theEuropean System of Central Banks (ESCB).ChaMP is coordinated by a team chaired by Philipp Hartmann (ECB), and consisting of Diana Bonfim (Banco de Portugal), MargheritaBottero (Banca d’Italia), Emmanuel Dhyne (Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique) and Maria T. Valderrama(Oesterreichische Nationalbank), who are supported by Melina Papoutsi and Gonzalo Paz-Pardo (both ECB), 7 central bank advisersand 8 academic consultants.ChaMP seeks to revisit our knowledge of monetary transmission channels in the euro area in the context of unprecedented shocks,multiple ongoing structural changes and the extension of the monetary policy toolkit over the last decade and a half as well as the recentsteep inflation wave and its reversal. More information is provided on its website.ECB Working Paper Series No 3064 1 AbstractWe provide novel evidence on the supply-side transmission of monetary policythrough a floating-rate channel. After a rate hike, firms with floating-rate loans keepprices elevated to offset higher borrowing costs, thereby reducing the effectiveness ofmonetary policy. Using monthly data on product-level prices, industry-level inflationrates and the euro-area credit register from 2021 to 2023, we find that the short-runimpact of monetary tightening on inflation is 50% smaller when firms rely on floating-rate loans. This effect is stronger for firms that rely more on working capital to financeproduction and when they can easily pass on higher prices to their sticky customerbase (customer capital). Since firms with floating-rate loans face an increase in theirfinancial burden, their loan terms are more frequently renegotiated, often resulting inreduced spreads and a shift from floating to fixed rates. Overall, if firms across theeuro area had a lower reliance on floating-rate loans, inflation would have been 0.8Keywords: Monetary policy transmission, Inflation, Floating-rate loans, Market power, Product prices percentage points lower in 2022-2023.JEL:E31, E52, G21ECB Working Paper Series No 3064 Non-technical SummaryA tightening of monetary policy rates is widely acknowledged as a key tool against inflation.Conventional macroeconomic models suggest that inflation will slow in response to anincrease in policy rates due to a reduction in aggregate demand caused by higher borrowingcosts (Bernanke and Gertler, 1989; Kashyap et al., 1993).However, the idea that monetary policy can also affect inflation via the (firm) supplyside is generally overlooked (Drechsler et al., 2023). All else equal, an increase in borrowingcosts will lead to a reduction in a firm’s cash flows, especially when firms need to pre-fundproduction using working capital. Firms may react to the increase in funding costs byincreasing prices, . Such a reaction could weaken the impact of traditional demand-sidechannels of monetary policy.In this paper, we provide novel micro-level evidence on the supply-side transmissionof monetary policy. To do so, we combine product-level prices and industry-level inflationdata with loan-level credit register information for euro-area corporations. Notably, weexploit the fact that having a floating-rate loan implies a direct and immediate impact of apolicy tightening on firms’ funding costs. In contrast, the pass-through of monetary policyrates on borrowing costs is limited in the presence of debt contracts that are rigid or fixedin nominal terms, such as fixed-rate loans.Our main finding is that firms with floating-rate loans keep prices elevated after a ratehike in order to offset the negative impact of higher borrowing costs. Our industry-leveldata reveal that the short-term reduction in inflation during the 2022-2023 monetary-policytightening in the euro area is 50% smaller in industry-country pairs (“markets”) dominatedby floating-rate loans.This finding is confirmed in the more granular product-level prices dataset. A 1 percent-age point increase in the ECB policy rate reduces product-price growth by 0.51 percentagepoints for products sold by firms fully reliant on fixed-rate loans (“fixed-rate firms” hence-forth). In contrast, the same increase in the policy rate reduces product-price growth onlyECB Working Paper Series No 3064 3 by 0.23 percentage points for products sold by firms fully reliant on floating-rate loans(“floating-rate firms” henceforth).We also investigate how the impact of monetary policy on inflation via floating-rateloans varies by characteristics of the market. We propose two main channels. The firstis about working capital: if firms rely on credit to finance production and have to payfor