The objective of the paper is to investigate whether the stock price reactions of commercial banks to monetary policy actions are dependent on the state of the economy. The results indicate that monetary policy actions have asymmetric effects on the returns of commercial banks across different monetary policy and business environments. The asymmetric effects can primarily be attributed to the asymmetric effects of monetary policy on discount rates across different monetary and business environments. We also observe that the impact of monetary policy on the returns of commercial banks is affected by bank-specific characteristics. Bank size, leverage and profitability play an important role in explaining the cross-sectional variation in bank returns as a result of monetary policy changes. We find that cross-sectional bank-specific characteristics affect the bank returns asymmetrically as a result of monetary policy changes across different business conditions. The results suggest that the effectiveness of monetary policy depends on the states of the economy (JEL: E52, E58, G14, G21).

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