The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of monetary policy shocks on a financial network, which we dub the “financial network channel of monetary policy transmission”. To this aim, we develop a agent-based model (ABM) in which banks extend loans to firms. The resulting bank–firm credit network is structured as determined by plausible behavioral assumptions, with both firms and banks being always willing to close a credit deal with the network partner perceived to be less risky. As our ABM succeeds in reproducing several key stylized facts of bank–firm credit networks, we then assess through simulations how exogenous shocks to the policy interest rate affect some key topological measures of the bank–firm credit network (density, assortativity, size of largest component, and degree distribution). Our simulations show that such topological features of the bank–firm credit network are significantly affected by shocks to the policy interest rate, with such an impact varying quantitatively and qualitatively with the sign, magnitude, and duration of the shocks.

本文旨在探讨货币政策冲击对金融网络的影响，我们称之为“货币政策传导的金融网络通道”。为此，我们开发了一种基于代理的模型 (ABM)，在该模型中，银行向企业提供贷款。由此产生的银行-企业信贷网络的结构是由合理的行为假设决定的，企业和银行总是愿意与被认为风险较小的网络合作伙伴达成信贷交易。由于我们的 ABM 成功地再现了银行-企业信贷网络的几个关键程式化事实，我们随后通过模拟评估政策利率的外生冲击如何影响银行-企业信贷网络的一些关键拓扑指标（密度、分类性、最大规模）分量和度分布）。