Structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) are widely used for policy analysis and to provide stylized facts for dynamic general equilibrium models. Yet there have been no workable rank conditions to ascertain whether an SVAR is globally identified. When identifying restrictions such as long-run...

Models used for policy analysis should generate reliable unconditional forecasts as well as policy simulations (conditional forecasts) that are based on a structural model of the economy. Vector autoregression (VAR) models have been criticized for having inaccurate forecasts as well as being...

We explore two popular approaches to empirical analysis of monetary policy: the New Keynesian and the identified vector autoregression approaches. Stylized models of private behavior coupled with simple rules describing policy behavior characterize New Keynesian work. Vector autoregressions...

In the applications of identified VAR models, finite-sample properties are not obvious to obtain when identifying restrictions are imposed on some lagged relationships. As a result, researchers have either left lagged relationships unrestricted even though some restrictions clearly make economic...

This paper uses a simple New Keynesian monetary DSGE model as a prior for a vector autoregression and shows that the resulting model is competitive with standard benchmarks in terms of forecasting and can be used for policy analysis.

Vector autoregression (VAR) models are widely used for policy analysis. Some authors caution, however, that the forecast errors of the federal funds rate from such a VAR are large compared to those from the federal funds futures market. From these findings, it is argued that the inaccurate...

Many economic applications call for simultaneous equations VAR modeling. We show that the existing importance sampler can be prohibitively inefficient for this type of models. We develop a Gibbs simulator that works for both simultaneous and recursive VAR models with a much broader range of...

This paper examines whether financial aggregates provide information useful for predicting real output growth and inflation, extending the inquiry conducted in Tallman and Chandra (1996). First, we investigate whether perfect knowledge of the future values of financial aggregates helps improve...

The authors present a framework for computing and evaluating linear projections of macro variables conditional on hypothetical paths of monetary policy. A modest policy intervention is a change in policy that does not significantly shift agents' beliefs about policy regime and does not generate...