Monetary Policy, Interest Rate Rules, and the Term Structure of Interest Rates

Interest rate rules play an important role in the empirical analysis of monetary policy as well as in modern monetary theory. Besides giving a comprehensive insight into this line of research the study incorporates the term structure of interest rates into interest rate rules. This is performed analytically as well as empirically. In doing so, state of the art techniques of modern finance for the analysis of the term structure of interest rates are introduced into the macroeconomic concept of interest rate rules. The study implies that from the theoretical perspective term structure effects are an important extension of interest rate rules. From an empirical perspective it shows that including term structure effects in interest rate reaction functions improves our understanding of the interest rate setting of the Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank.

Autorentext

The Author: Ralf Fendel was born in Rüdesheim am Rhein (Germany). He studied economics at the University of Mainz. He was research assistant and doctoral student at the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar near Koblenz from 1994 to 1998. Thereafter he worked as an economist with the Deutsche Bundesbank from 1998 to 2000. Since 2000 he has been working as an assistant professor of economics at the WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management where he completed his Habilitation in 2006.

Inhalt

Contents: Analysis of the monetary policy of the ECB and the Bundesbank - Derivation and estimation of interest rate rules - Special focus on the term structure of interest rates - Combination of the concept of interest rate rules with affine no-arbitrage term structure models.