This dissertation contains three empirical studies on monetary policy.The first chapter investigates the impact of banking deregulation on the effectiveness of monetary policy and provides new evidence on how bank-level heterogeneity affects the lending channel of transmission. Exploiting the staggered deregulation of interstate banking in the U.S. throughout the 1980's, I find that the deregulation strengthens the effect of monetary policy on bank lending, doubling the response of loan growth to monetary shocks. This effect occurs primarily for small and relatively illiquid banks, pointing to a strengthening of the bank lending channel. After deregulation this subset of banks engages in a larger substitution of securities for bank loans following a contractionary monetary shock. Changes in bank market structure and loan portfolio composition cannot explain these effects of the deregulation. By contrast, the findings point to a dilution in the strength of bank-borrower customer relationships and a stronger propensity of banks to cut loans to their customers.The second chapter studies the response of stock prices to monetary policy, distinguishing effects of exogenous shocks from ``Delphic" shocks that reveal the Federal Reserve's macroeconomic forecasts. A measure of Federal Reserve private information that exploits differences in central bank and market forecasts is used to decompose monetary policy surprises into these separate components. Contractionary policy shocks of either type lower stock prices with exogenous shocks having a larger negative effect. There is also some evidence of an asymmetry; when FOMC meetings are unscheduled or when the fed funds rate reverses direction, stock prices actually rise in response to a contractionary Delphic shock.The third chapter examines the response of real personal income in eight United States regions to monetary policy shocks using a structural VAR framework. The external instruments approach is used for identification. I split the sample into two periods 1958:Q1 - 1992:Q4 and 1993:Q1 - 2015:Q2 and find markedly different responses between the two. In the early period real personal income decreases in all regions following a contractionary shock while in the later period little response is seen. I investigate two potential reasons why there has been a reduction in differential regional responses to monetary policy over time. The evidence suggests that the reduction may be associated with a homogenization in regional industry composition over recent decades.
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