Home Business & Economics Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?

  • Petra Gerlach-Kristen
Published/Copyright: March 25, 2004

Abstract

Interest-rate smoothing is traditionally attributed to the gradual adjustment of monetary policy to shocks. Rudebusch (2002) argues that smoothing can also arise spuriously if an autocorrelated variable is incorrectly excluded from the estimated reaction function. This paper presents a model which discriminates between these two explanations using U.S. data. We find that both seem to matter, but that policy inertia appears to be less important than suggested by the existing literature. Further, the excluded variable is likely to reflect financial market conditions.

Published Online: 2004-03-25

©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Advances Article
  2. Price Stability and Monetary Policy Effectiveness when Nominal Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero
  3. Contributions Article
  4. Aggregate Price Changes and Dispersion: A Comparison of the Equity and Goods and Services Markets
  5. Dissemination of Technology in Market and Planned Economies
  6. Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?
  7. Is the U.S. Aggregate Production Function Cobb-Douglas? New Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution
  8. What Does It Take to Explain Procyclical Productivity?
  9. Endogenous Distribution, Politics, and the Growth-Equity Tradeoff
  10. Explaining Speculative Expansions
  11. Tariffs, Entry Regulation and Markups: Country Size Matters
  12. Schumpeterian Growth, North-South Trade and Wage Rigidity
  13. Do Federal Reserve Policy Surprises Reveal Superior Information about the Economy?
  14. Bailouts and Bank Runs in a Model of Crony Capitalism
  15. Multiple Equilibria in Heterogeneous Expectations Models
  16. Topics Article
  17. Empirical Perspectives on Long-Term External Debt
  18. Output Gap Uncertainty and Monetary Policy During the 1970s
  19. The UK Household Sector Demand for Risky Money
  20. The Relationship between Stock Prices, House Prices and Consumption in OECD Countries
  21. Labor Market Performance and Flexibility: Which Comes First?
  22. A Simple Locally Interactive Model of Ergodic and Nonergodic Growth
  23. Do Minimum Wages Raise the NAIRU?
  24. Strictly Endogenous Growth with Non-renewable Resources Implies an Unbounded Growth Rate
  25. Creative Destruction and Policy in a Model of Endogenous Growth
  26. Intergenerational Habits, Fiscal Policy, and Welfare
  27. Output Composition of the Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism in Japan
  28. Socio-Cultural Variables and Economic Success: Evidence from Italian Provinces 1951-1991
  29. Monetary Policy and the Information Content of the Yield Spread
  30. The Dynamics of Fertility and Growth: Baby Boom, Bust and Bounce-Back
  31. Imbalance Effects in the Lucas Model: an Analytical Exploration
  32. Assessing Aggregate Tests of Efficiency for Dynamic Economies
  33. The Output Gap, Expected Future Inflation and Inflation Dynamics: Another Look
  34. Unions and Workforce Adjustment Costs
Downloaded on 31.12.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.2202/1534-6005.1169/html
Scroll to top button