Banking Crisis

Stress in financial markets influences economic agents’ behavior by creating uncertainty and changing the expectations. Critical financial stress can lead to financial crisis. Financial crises are among the events always present in the world economy. Iran is not an exception. This paper aims to study the impact of financial stresses on Iran’s per capita GDP. By using ARDL (Auto Regressive Distributed Lags), the effects of financial stress indices, including foreign currency, stock, and banking markets on Iran’s GDP per capita is estimated. Our findings show that financial stresses in currency market and stock market have positive and negative effects on economic growth respectively. Banking stresses have a positive influence on economic growth. The cumulative impact of financial stresses is positive on Iran’s economy, but is different from the effect of banking stresses with respect to intensity. JEL Classification: E44, G01, O11, O16

This study aims to identify the macroeconomic factors influencing the likelihood of a banking crisis in Iran, with a particular focus on macroprudential policy. We employed a discrete econometric model (Logit/Probit) using data from 2011 to 2023. The independent variables include the loan-to-deposit ratio (LTD) as a proxy for macroprudential policy, the interbank interest rate as a proxy for monetary policy, as well as the inflation rate and exchange rate volatility as indicators of macroeconomic instability. The positive and significant coefficient of LTD confirms that liquidity risk arising from excessive credit expansion is the main domestic factor increasing the probability of a crisis. The strong and positive coefficients for inflation and exchange rate volatility suggest that macroeconomic and currency shocks threaten financial stability by deteriorating asset quality and increasing loan defaults. The coefficient for the interbank rate implies the dominance of the disciplinary and supervisory effects of monetary policy over liquidity risk, meaning that a targeted increase in the policy rate by the central bank effectively reduces the probability of a crisis by imposing higher costs on riskier banks. Overall, the findings indicate that financial stability in Iran is influenced by short-term liquidity management and macroeconomic shocks, and that macroprudential policy plays an effective role in curbing risk-taking behavior.