Do bank-based financial systems reduce macroeconomic volatility by smoothing interest rates?

This paper investigates the business cycle implications of limited pass-through from market interest rates to retail interest rates based on a calibrated sticky price model. The main result of the paper is that limited interest rate pass-through reduces output volatility to a modest extent as long as the pass-through is complete at least in the long-run. Larger volatility reductions are obtained if the long-run pass-through is incomplete. However, in this case output volatility is reduced at the cost of higher inflation volatility.