Asymmetric effects in a monetary policy rule could appear due to asymmetric preferences of the central bank or/and due to nonlinearities in the economic system. It might be suspected that monetary authorities are more aggressive to the inflation rate when it is above its target level than when...

This paper investigates the empirical specification of the Taylor Rule. Building on the New Keynesian paradigm, we derive a general nonlinear specification for the optimal policy rule that nests the standard linear Taylor Rule as a particular case. Using a novel semi-parametric modeling...