DOES POLICY INTEREST RATE HAVE ASYMMETRIC ADJUSTMENT: CASE OF JORDAN

This study seeks to test the hypothesis that policy interest rate in Jordan adjusts differently to expansionary versus contractionary monetary policies. The answer highlights on the behavior of the central bank of Jordan (CBJ), and helps to conclude if the CBJ is biased in favor of certain policy. The current study applies threshold autoregressive (TAR) and momentum TAR (MTAR) models. The results show that policy interest rate in Jordan displays symmetric adjustment which supports the idea that the CBJ is not prejudice of either easy or tight monetary policy.