A Comparison of Estimation Methods for Vector Autoregressive Moving-Average Models

Classical Gaussian maximum likelihood estimation of mixed vector autoregressive moving-average models is plagued with various numerical problems and has been considered di±cult by many applied researchers. These disadvantages could have led to the dominant use of vector autoregressive models in macroeconomic research. Therefore, several other, simpler estimation methods have been proposed in the literature. In this paper these methods are compared by means of a Monte Carlo study. Different evaluation criteria are used to judge the relative performances of the algorithms.