Working Paper

When do long-run identifying restrictions give reliable results?


Abstract: Many recent papers have tried to identify behavioral disturbances in vector autoregressions (VAR's) by imposing restrictions on the long-run effects of shocks. This paper argues that this approach will support reliable structured inferences only if the underlying economy satisfies strong restrictions. Absent restrictions linking long-run and short-run dynamics, every decomposition of a VAR is essentially equally consistent with any long-run restriction. Further, dynamic common factor restrictions must hold if the scheme is to work properly in small models estimated using time-aggregated data. The paper illustrates possible consequences of failure of these assumptions using bivariate models to identify aggregate supply and demand disturbances.

Access Documents

File(s): File format is application/pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1994/462/ifdp462.pdf

Authors

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Part of Series: International Finance Discussion Papers

Publication Date: 1994

Number: 462