The Impact of Monetary Policy Shocks on Stock Prices: Evidence from Canada and the United States

Using structural VAR models with short-run restrictions appropriate for Canada and the United States, we empirically examine whether openness and macroeconomic interdependence matter for the impact on and transmission to stock prices of monetary policy shocks. We find that, in Canada, the immediate response of stock prices to a domestic contractionary monetary policy shock is small and the dynamic response is brief, whereas in the U.S., the immediate response of stock prices to a similar shock is relatively large and the dynamic response is relatively prolonged. We argue that these results are largely driven by differences in dynamic responses of domestic short-term interest rates to monetary policy shocks, and are ultimately due to structural differences between the two countries that we model in this paper.