Determining the Interest Rate on Deposits in the Iranian Banking System: Cooperative or Competitive Game between the Central Bank and Followers ?

This paper studies the monetary policies of the central bank to determine the inter-est rate on deposits in the interaction with the Iranian banking system in the form of Stackelberg and Nash equilibrium games. The leader of the game is the central bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while the followers of the game include three banks called A, B, and C. The leader of the game regulates its monetary policies based on the relationship between inflation rate and interest rate on depos-its in the form of three scenarios of "legal deposit ratio", "legal deposit award rate", and "the rate of commissions received" from the followers. The follower players also determine "the interest rate on deposits," based on the scenarios of the leader player. The results of this research (2010-2019) by MINITAB Soft-ware indicated that in the studied year (2019), the strategy of the players of this game has been mostly Nash (more competitive) rather than cooperative. If the players of this game had chosen cooperative strategy (Stackelberg game), they would have achieved greater profit. Also, the optimal tool for the monetary policy of the leader and follower players has been the “increasing the legal reserve re-ward rate".