How to capture the full extent of price stickiness in credit card interest rates?

We present a new approach to evaluate the full extent of price stickiness in credit card interest rates by modifying the existing asymmetric models so that they can be adopted for testing both the amount and adjustment asymmetries as well as the lagged dynamic inertia. Consistent with similar studies, banks behave asymmetrically in response to changes in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) target interest rate. Rate rises are passed onto the consumer faster than rate cuts and the credit card interest rate showed a very significant degree of downward rigidity. Based on the magnitude of the pass-through parameters obtained from short-run dynamic models, rate rises had a full one-to-one and instantaneous impact on credit card interest rates. However, in absolute terms the short-run effects of rate cuts were not only less than half of the rate rises but also were delayed on average by three months.