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...

This thesis contributes to the literature through an empirical analysis of the first decade of single European monetary policy within a real-time approach and offers new specifications of the policy reaction function of Central Banks based on a novel econometric modeling technique. The results...