International monetary policy surprise spillovers

This is the first paper to examine international monetary surprise spillovers and to estimate the response of security prices to monetary and nonmonetary surprises. Monetary surprises have a slope effect on the domestic yield curve—short maturity yields adjust much more than longer maturity yields. These results are similar to other studies. The following results are new. US monetary surprises spill over and affect Australian yields and equity returns. Australian monetary surprises do not spill over to the US. Nonmonetary surprises are much more important than monetary policy surprises in explaining longer maturity yield changes and equity returns.