Is the Fisher Effect Nonlinear? Some Evidence for Spain, 1963-2002

In this paper we examine the role of nonlinearities in the relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation, in order to shed some additional light on the mostly unfavorable evidence on the presence of a full Fisher effect. The analysis is applied to the case of Spain for the period 1963-2002, which allows us to re-examine and extend previous results on the subject. The empirical methodology makes use of recent developments on threshold cointegration, so that cointegration between a pair of variables should be expected once a certain threshold was reached.