Exchange Rate Threshold Affecting Financial Stability of Iranian Banks

The performance of Iranian banking network listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange indicates that the accumulated losses have exceeded the risk limits, which may threatens the stability of the banking system. However, Contrary to the conventional belief, the augmentation of exchange rates could not improve the financial position of banking network. Hence, in this paper an attempt is made to investigate the impact of the estimated threshold level of the exchange rate on the financial stability of banking system. The explanatory variables of the model comprising the certain macroeconomic variables such as the rate of inflation, exchange rate, GDP growth rate, as well as the banks’ balance sheet variables including the profit, equity, Non-Performing Loans(NPL) and also the amount of loans extended to the customers. Due to key role assigned to the exchange rate as an anchor in the economy, we may envisage that the indefinite appreciation in the value of exchange rate does not necessarily enhance the financial position of banking system as we were witness in the Iranian economy in the past, but when the exchange rate rose from Rials 12260 in the 1391, the financial stability of banking system experienced the relative stable trend and subsequently with increasing the foreign exchange rate to the threshold level of Rials 45627, this trend continued to some extent. None the less, after reaching the designated threshold level, the financial stability of banks could change the direction showing that any movement of exchange rate beyond the threshold level of Rials 45627 could lead to reduction of banking stability in the Iranian economy. For this purpose, we applied the Generalized Method of Moment Method to estimate the model Viz-a-Viz employing the Dynamic Panel Data of 31 banks for the study period of 1385-1395 in the Iranian calendar.