We examine how Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings influence international stock returns, highlighting that the standard Fed news channel creates an even-week pattern in the United States and other highly integrated developed markets. By analyzing the Chinese market, we demonstrate that the news channel contributes to higher returns, operating in non-US countries even without international equity flows. Additionally, we identify an uncertainty channel that produces a contrasting odd-week pattern. Placebo tests indicate that the effectiveness of the uncertainty channel may depend on the financial market’s openness. Overall, our research enriches and extends the existing view on how the Federal Reserve, as the leader of central banks, shapes international stock market returns throughout the entire FOMC cycle.

In this paper, we examine the spillover effect of US monetary policy uncertainty (MPU) on China's real economic activities, and study the international transmission mechanisms of MPU shock from the view of financial integration, on both aggregate and firm level. Based on the macro level evidences, we find that an increase in US MPU will depress not only domestic output but also the real economic activities in China. The international spillover effect of US MPU shock will be intensified when international financial markets get more integrated. The firm level evidence based on Chinese listed firms further corroborate the deflationary effect of US MPU shock. Theoretically, we build a two-country New Keynesian DSGE model featuring monetary uncertainty shocks to confirm the empirical evidences.