This study examines the transmission of monetary policy to bank credit granted to the non-financial private sector in Morocco, a bank-dominated emerging economy where non-financial corporations play a central role in investment, employment, and economic growth. Using monthly data over the period 2006–2023, the analysis relies on an ARDL–ECM framework that distinguishes short-run credit dynamics from long-run adjustment processes while accounting for potential structural breaks. The results indicate that changes in the policy rate do not exert a statistically significant effect on bank credit in the short run, suggesting a high degree of credit inertia. The bounds test supports the existence of a stable long-run equilibrium relationship in credit, although no significant long-run elasticities with respect to monetary policy or credit risk variables are identified. Instead, credit dynamics appear to be driven primarily by short-run adjustment mechanisms, largely shaped by credit risk and balance-sheet allocation. Overall, these findings suggest that monetary transmission in Morocco operates gradually and indirectly, mainly through prudential and balance-sheet channels rather than the conventional interest-rate channel. This implies that the effectiveness of monetary policy depends critically on prevailing risk conditions and their interaction with prudential frameworks in bank-based emerging financial systems.

This paper examines the short-run transmission of monetary policy to bank credit granted to the non-financial corporate sector in Morocco, a bank-based emerging economy. Using monthly macro-financial data over the period of 2014–2024, the study estimates a reduced-form VAR model to analyze the dynamic interactions between the policy rate, bank credit, banks’ holdings of sovereign securities, credit risk indicators, and short-term market spreads. Impulse response functions and forecast error variance decompositions indicate that a one-standard-deviation monetary policy shock is associated with a small and short-lived response of non-financial corporations bank credit at a monthly horizon, accounting for only a limited share of its forecast error variance, while the same shock is more strongly reflected in market spreads and banks’ balance-sheet reallocations toward sovereign assets, alongside temporary movements in credit risk indicators. Overall, these results are consistent with a reduced-form transmission pattern in which monetary policy appears to affect bank credit primarily through indirect financial channels related to risk perception, portfolio reallocation, and balance-sheet management, rather than through immediate changes in aggregate credit volumes. This interpretation is conditional on the VAR specification and short-run horizon considered, and suggests an attenuation of the interest rate–credit channel in a bank-dominated emerging economy, rather than evidence of a structural breakdown of monetary transmission.

This article explores the determinants of bank credit granted to very small, small, and medium-sized enterprises (VSMEs) in Morocco over the period 2014-2024. The study focuses on the combined effects of monetary policy signals, prudential reg...

In this article, we are concerned with a central element of the Moroccan economy, namely small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which often find themselves in a situation where alternative sources of financing are not easily accessible, including bank financing. Indeed, Moroccan SMEs are closely dependent on banking institutions to obtain the financial support necessary for their projects. However, these businesses frequently face the phenomenon of credit rationing, necessitating improved access to credit. In this research work, we have contributed to the study of this phenomenon, focusing specifically on the Casablanca Settat region. Our research revolves around two essential objectives. Firstly, we aimed to evaluate the impact of credit rationing on SMEs in this region. Next, we focused on empirically identifying the determinants of this phenomenon. To achieve these objectives, we selected a target population of 218 SMEs from the Casablanca Settat region. Our initial statistical tests revealed that SMEs in the Casablanca-Settat region are facing both total credit rationing and partial credit rationing. Subsequently, the results obtained from multinomial logistic regression tests reveal that the SME's sector of activity, age, reputation, legal status, size, gender of its manager, age, education, nature of the relationship with the bank, and professional experience all play an important role in explaining this phenomenon.

This paper examines the short-run dynamics of monetary policy transmission in a bank-dominated emerging economy, with a particular focus on the relative timing of adjustments across bank equity valuations, balance-sheet aggregates, and inflation. Using monthly data over the period 2018–2024, the analysis relies on a reduced-form VAR framework. The results indicate that monetary policy innovations, interpreted as informational signals, are more visibly reflected in bank equity valuations—proxied by the MASI banking index—at short horizons, while balance-sheet aggregates exhibit more limited and less persistent adjustments. Inflation dynamics remain difficult to identify clearly within the short-run horizon, consistent with the slow-moving nature of price adjustments. These findings are consistent with a configuration in which policy-related information is first incorporated into financial valuations before being gradually reflected in credit and macroeconomic variables. This pattern is interpreted as reflecting heterogeneous adjustment speeds rather than a causal transmission sequence. The contribution of the paper is to document these heterogeneous short-run adjustment patterns within a unified empirical framework, highlighting the importance of temporal dynamics in the analysis of monetary transmission.

This paper examines the short-run transmission of monetary policy shocks to bank credit granted to the non-financial corporate sector in Morocco, a bank-based emerging economy. While conventional monetary theory emphasizes the interest rate channel, growing empirical evidence suggests that monetary transmission is increasingly conditioned by banks’ balance-sheet constraints and credit risk considerations. The central question addressed is whether policy-rate shocks translate into short-run credit expansion or are instead absorbed through alternative banking adjustment mechanisms. The empirical analysis relies on monthly macro-financial data over the period 2014–2024 and employs a reduced-form Vector Autoregressive (VAR) framework. Impulse response functions, forecast error variance decompositions, and Granger causality tests are used to assess the dy-namic interactions between the policy rate, non-financial corporate credit, banks’ sovereign asset holdings, and credit risk conditions.The results show that monetary policy shocks generate weak, short-lived, and economically negligible responses in non-financial corporate credit, with no evidence of sustained credit expansion following policy-rate changes. By contrast, monetary impulses are associated with systematic balance-sheet reallocation toward sovereign assets and with more pronounced, though transitory, movements in credit risk indicators. Variance decompositions further reveal that short-run credit dynamics are overwhelmingly driven by internal banking and risk-related factors, while monetary policy shocks explain only a marginal share of credit fluctuations. Overall, the findings indicate that short-run monetary transmission in Morocco operates predominantly through risk-sensitive balance-sheet adjustments rather than through direct quantity-based credit responses, thereby reframing the interpretation of weak credit reactions to monetary policy in bank-based emerging economies.