Are structural vector autoregressions (VARs) useful for discriminating between macro models‘ Recent assessments of VARs have shown that these statistical methods have adequate size properties. In other words, in simulation exercises, VARs will only infrequently reject the true data generating...

Among the various explanations for the runup in oil and commodity prices of recent years, one story focuses on the role of monetary policy in the United States and in developing economies. In this view, developing countries that peg their currencies to the dollar were forced to ease their...