Estimating banks' equity duration: a panel cointegration approach

Using panel unit root and cointegration analyses, we estimate the equity duration for banks covering the countries of Australia, US, Canada and the UK for the period 1986 to 2003. Our results show that banks in the UK had the highest duration followed by those in Australia, Canada and then the US. These results have important implications for policymakers particularly because banks, among others, act as conduit of monetary policy. Since duration is a measure of sensitivity to interest rates, these results imply that banks in the UK would be the most affected by monetary policy changes while those in the US would be the least affected. These results are also of importance to investors. Since duration also measures the speed by which cash flows come back, these results indicate that investors in US banks recover their investment faster than the investors in banks of Australia, Canada and the UK. This contention is supported by the fact that among the four countries, banks in the US are the most profitable while those in the UK are the least.