Working Paper

Inference for VARs identified with sign restrictions


Abstract: There is a fast growing literature that partially identifies structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) by imposing sign restrictions on the responses of a subset of the endogenous variables to a particular structural shock (sign-restricted SVARs). To date, the methods that have been used are only justified from a Bayesian perspective. This paper develops methods of constructing error bands for impulse response functions of sign-restricted SVARs that are valid from a frequentist perspective. The authors also provide a comparison of frequentist and Bayesian error bands in the context of an empirical application ? the former can be twice as wide as the latter.

Keywords: Vector autoregression; Econometric models;

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Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Part of Series: Working Papers

Publication Date: 2011

Number: 11-20