The Banking Spread and the Resource Cost of Capital
The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). It contributes to the dissemination and promotion of the work by researchers from the institution. This series is indexed at Research Papers in Economics (RePEc).
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The paper provides a model of the banking firm in the macroeconomy intended to explain what determines the interest rate spread. A key factor explaining the spread in our model is the resource cost of capital. A statistical result confirms the prediction of the model, that is, the bank's spread is higher in low income economies.
