Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 March 2019
The period of low interest rates since the global financial crisis provides a unique opportunity to examine monetary policy reaction functions near the zero lower bound (ZLB). Using smooth transition regressions for the Euro area and a panel of industrialized countries we show that central banks anticipate the ZLB by less aggressive policies in its vicinity while we do not find a significant difference between both regimes for the US.
The author is grateful to Gilbert Colletaz for providing the RATS code. The author would like to thank anonymous referees, Julien Pinter, Wolfgang Strehl, Frank Westermann, Joachim Wilde, and participants of the INFER workshop on “The European Integration and its International Dimension,” the 47th Annual Conference of the Money, Macro and Finance Research Group at Cardiff University, the 23rd Annual Conference of the Multinational Finance Society, and the 3rd HenU/INFER Workshop on Applied Macroeconomics for helpful comments and suggestions.