Is there a bank lending channel in Tunisia?

This paper aims to investigate the relevance of bank lending channel of monetary policy in Tunisia by using disaggregated bank level data set. To avoid this ambiguity, a panel of annual balance sheet data on 10 Tunisian banks used to test whether lending responses to a change in monetary policy differs, depending on the balance sheet strength of a bank. The empirical evidence has stated that monetary policy shocks is significantly and negatively influenced the banks’ loan supply, and therefore has supported the existence of bank lending channel in Tunisia. In addition, several bank characteristics variables namely capitalization, size and liquidity in the transmission of monetary policy is studied. Size revealed to be an important bank characteristic that affects the way Tunisian banks react to monetary policy changes.