Resumen
This paper examines the impact of the deposit rates on the changes of lending rates in the Brazilian banking system. We employ time series analyses over the period of January 1997 and June 2016 to estimate the long run and short run effects of the deposit rates on the changes of the lending rates. The preliminary empirical results suggest: (i) that there was a structural break in the lending deposit spread in November 2012, (ii) the spread adjusts to its long term trend systematically indicating that the Brazilian commercial banks exhibited competitive pricing behavior over this period; and (iii) the lending rate and deposit rate mutually affect each other and the sensitivity of the lending rates in response to the changes of deposit rates increased after the break point.JEL Classifications E43, E52, O16Keywords: Interest rates, Financial Markets, Developing Countries, Economic Growth