A major challenge for proxy vector autoregressive analysis is the construction of a suitable instrument variable for identifying a shock of interest. We propose a simple proxy that can be constructed whenever the dating and sign of particular shocks are known. It is shown that the proxy can lead...

A major challenge for proxy vector autoregressive analysis is the construction of a suitable external instrument variable or proxy for identifying a shock of interest. Some authors construct sophisticated proxies that account for the dating and size of the shock while other authors consider...

A two-step generalized method of moments estimation procedure can be made robust to heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation in the data by using a nonparametric estimator of the optimal weighting matrix. This paper addresses the issue of choosing the corresponding smoothing parameter (or...