coefficients of the lagged day-to-day rate sum to +0.86. This means that the Bundesbank prefered steady and smooth operating procedures to volatile money market rates. This corresponds to the medium-term orientation [...] shocks have no real effects at all. standard In trying to identify asymmetric effects it is necessary to specify a central bank reaction function to assess the stance of monetary policy. Many of the above [...] presents the empirical analysis. To test for asymmetric reactions I use different regression approaches. The task is to first identify the stance of monetary policy and then to test for asymmetries. It is analyzed