In many VARs, monetary policy shocks are identified with the least squares residuals from a regression of the federal funds rate on an assortment of variables. Such regressions appear to be structurally fragile and are at odds with other evidence on the nature of the Fed's reaction function;...

The advent of EMU inspired a large literature searching for differences in the monetary policy transmission among European countries. Stylised facts seemed to arise, classifying the countries as having either rapid or slow transmission. This paper takes a comprehensive look at the existing...

This article interprets time series facts regarding the sources of business fluctuations in Japan and attempts to uncover possible characteristics of the effects of monetary policy over the last two decades. It argues that given the institutional features of the Bank of Japan's operating...

In this paper, we estimate two small, forward-looking, macroeconomic models for the US and Germany and we compare the implied optimal monetary policy rules.