Using federal funds futures data, we show the importance of surprise communication as a component of monetary policy for U.S. macro variables, both before and after 2008. While Gürkaynak et al. (2005) stress the importance of monetary policy communication for asset prices, much of the...

In a VAR model of the US, the response of the relative price of durables to a monetary contraction is either flat or mildly positive. It significantly falls only if narrowly defined as the ratio between new house and nondurables prices. These findings survive three identification strategies and...

This paper studies the responses of residential property and equity prices, inflation and economic activity to monetary policy shocks in 17 countries, using data spanning 1986 - 2006. We estimate VARs for individual economies and panel VARs in which we distinguish between groups of countries on...