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This article develops statistical inference methods for a class of set‐identified models, where the errors are known functions of observations and the parameters satisfy either serial or/and cross‐sectional independence conditions. This class of models includes the independent component analysis (ICA), Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR), and multi‐variate mixed causal–non‐causal models. We use the Generalized Covariance (GCov) estimator to compute the residual‐based portmanteau statistic for testing the error independence hypothesis. Next, we build the confidence sets for the identified sets of parameters by inverting the test statistic. We also discuss the choice (design) of these statistics. The approach is illustrated by simulations examining the under‐identification condition in an ICA model and an application to financial return series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show root‐T consistency of the smoothed AIC and smoothed BIC model averaging estimators (sAIC, sBIC) of impulse response coefficients in stationary vector autoregressive models of finite lag order. We also show that there is not one unique way to define the sAIC and sBIC estimators, but that instead there is a whole class of each of these defined by a weight scaling factor that allows the averaging estimator to become more similar to either its model selection counterpart or the equal weights averaging estimator. We also show asymptotic validity of a bootstrap method for estimating the averaging estimators' distributions. Simulations illustrate the benefits of using sAIC instead of AIC estimators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We implement a novel nonlinear structural model featuring an empirically successful frequency-dependent and asymmetric Phillips curve; unemployment frequency components interact with three components of core personal consumption expenditures (PCE)--core goods, housing, and core services exhousing--and a variable capturing supply shocks. Forecast tests verify accuracy in its unemployment--inflation trade-offs, crucial for monetary policy. Using this model, we assess the plausibility of the December 2022 Summary of Economic Projections (SEP). By 2025Q4, the SEP projects 2.1% inflation; however, conditional on the SEP unemployment path, we project 2.9%. A fairly deep recession delivers the SEP inflation path, but a simple welfare analysis rejects this outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper introduces a novel panel approach to structural vector autoregressive analysis. For identification, we impose independence of structural innovations at the pooled level. We demonstrate robustness of the method under cross‐sectional correlation and heterogeneity through simulation experiments. In an empirical application on monetary policy transmission in the Euro area, we find that bond spreads rise significantly after an unexpected monetary tightening. Furthermore, the central bank responds to offset effects of adverse financial shocks. Additionally, we document sizable heterogeneity in country‐specific output responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether there exists a structural change in the relationship between oil shocks and US industrial production with the rapid development in oil industry due to the shale revolution. Using a structural VAR model, I identify supply and demand shocks in global crude oil markets and estimate changes in their effects on the US industrial production. The key finding is that the US industry output has become more responsive to oil price shocks since the shale oil boom. Oil supply shocks have been more important and heterogeneous effects on the industrial production depending on the US or non‐US oil supply component. There has also emerged the positive effect of oil demand shocks, stimulating aggregate economic activity. In particular, I find that there have been strong positive spillover effects from an oil price increase to other industries not only through direct purchases of inputs for oil production and investment, but also through indirect knowledge and technology transfers created during the shale revolution. These findings have profound policy implications for the fiscal and monetary authority who copes with exogenous oil shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption of no correlation of the structural shocks as Blanchard and Quah's identification (BQ) assumes is not suitable when central banks, through discretionary policies or inflation targeting regimes, affect the output growth among other goals. In this study, we analyze the present value model of the current account (PVM) using a three‐SVAR specification and a modified BQ to identify three structural shocks: country‐specific permanent, country‐specific temporary, and global, but allowing the correlation of the domestic ones. Using Australia, Canada, Norway, and the UK, we find that those shocks are correlated and are less volatile than BQ would assume they are. The PVM predictions that hold are: (i) a positive (no) response in the current account to a country‐specific temporary (global) shock; and (ii) with the exception of Australia, there is no response in the current account to a country‐specific permanent shock. In addition, for all countries, the country‐specific temporary shock dominates current account changes but does not dominate net output growth fluctuations, which was a puzzle identified by a prior study. The role of the shock is enhanced by the modified BQ, but even with this enhancement, it still does not hold the most significant role in output variations, as indicated by PVM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: A quantile vector autoregressive (VAR) model, unlike standard VAR, traces the interaction among the endogenous random variables at any quantile. Quantile forecasts are obtained by factorizing the joint distribution in a recursive structure but cannot be obtained from reduced form estimation. Identification strategies and structural quantile impulse response functions are derived as generalization of the VAR model. The model is estimated using real and financial variables for the euro area. The dynamic properties of the system change across quantiles. This is relevant for stress testing exercises, whose goal is to forecast the tail behavior of the economy when hit by large financial and real shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use structural vector autoregressions to analyse the dynamic effects of shocks to natural gas and nitrogenous fertiliser prices on three major cereal crops: maize, rice and wheat. We find that the response of cereal prices to natural gas and fertiliser price shocks has been relatively small, instantaneous and transitory. These findings suggest that crop prices may change rapidly in response to energy and fertiliser prices, even when there are no shifts in the underlying fundamentals in crop markets. Furthermore, because the effects of the shocks dissipate rather quickly, short‐term measures to address swings in food prices may suffice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct an agricultural policy uncertainty (APU) index from leading national and local newspapers in major agricultural states in the United States from January 1999 to September 2021. Our analysis shows that economic policy uncertainty Granger causes APU linearly in the short run, but the relationship is nonlinear and bidirectional in the long run. When economic policy uncertainty is considered, APU significantly reduces hedgers' net short positions and speculators' net long positions (except for corn hedgers) in the corn and soybean markets. APU also has a significant positive impact on the log returns of corn and soybean futures prices, consistent with the theory of storage where commodity returns and volatility are positively correlated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We estimate a novel measure of global financial uncertainty (GFU) with a dynamic factor framework that jointly models global, regional, and country‐specific factors. We quantify the impact of GFU shocks on global output with a VAR analysis that achieves set identification via a combination of narrative, sign, ratio, and correlation restrictions. We find that the contraction in world output during the Great Recession would have been 13% milder in absence of GFU shocks. We also find support for a global finance uncertainty multiplier: the more global financial conditions deteriorate after a GFU shock, the larger the world output contraction is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We focus on the implications of the shale oil boom for the global supply of oil. In order to derive testable implications, we introduce a simple stylized model with two producers, one facing low production costs and one higher production costs but potentially lower adjustment costs, competing à la Stackelberg. We find that the supply function is flatter for the high cost producer and that the supply function for shale oil producers becomes more responsive to demand shocks when adjustment costs decline. On the empirical side, we apply an instrumental variable approach using estimates of demand‐driven oil price changes derived from a standard structural VAR of the oil market. A main finding is that global oil supply is rather vertical, with a short‐term elasticity around 0.05. A rolling sample reveals that the shale oil boom does not appear to have fundamentally changed the contours of global oil production, but there is evidence for the oil supply curve to become more vertical in Saudi Arabia and more price responsive in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) has already devastated the world, and the economy becomes the most critical challenge for any country worldwide. The increasing uncertainty of the COVID‐19 outbreak has made stock markets in China more turbulent and less predictable. Under the current exceptional circumstances, the hospitality industry suffered the most due to the travel restrictions. This research thus assesses the dynamic relationship among the COVID‐19 outbreak, macroeconomic fluctuations and hospitality stock returns based on a structural VAR framework from 13 January to 11 May 2020, in China. Evidence reveals that macroeconomic fluctuations and hospitality stock returns are significantly affected by shocks from the COVID‐19 outbreak. An unanticipated positive change of the COVID‐19 explosion triggers an addition in exchange rates and causes a reduction in the stock market and hospitality industry returns. For the impacts of the exchange rate, findings reveal that a surprise increase in exchange rates (currency depreciation) exerts a significant negative influence on stock market returns. Additionally, a positive change of stock market returns is linked to a decline in exchange rates and a rise in hospitality industry returns. Therefore, knowledge of these relationships can enable policymakers to evaluate and implement effective policies to stabilize the stock markets and help investors to make appropriate investment strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large Bayesian VARs are now widely used in empirical macroeconomics. One popular shrinkage prior in this setting is the natural conjugate prior as it facilitates posterior simulation and leads to a range of useful analytical results. This is, however, at the expense of modeling flexibility, as it rules out cross‐variable shrinkage, that is, shrinking coefficients on lags of other variables more aggressively than those on own lags. We develop a prior that has the best of both worlds: it can accommodate cross‐variable shrinkage, while maintaining many useful analytical results, such as a closed‐form expression of the marginal likelihood. This new prior also leads to fast posterior simulation—for a BVAR with 100 variables and 4 lags, obtaining 10,000 posterior draws takes less than half a minute on a standard desktop. We demonstrate the usefulness of the new prior via a structural analysis using a 15‐variable VAR with sign restrictions to identify 5 structural shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines interdependence between oil price shocks and United States economic uncertainty and their effects on global stock markets within a structural VAR model over the last 40 years. I find that aggregate demand shocks cause a transitory rise in global real stock returns, whereas precautionary oil demand and United States economic uncertainty shocks decline the returns. Especially, oil demand shocks significantly increase United States economic uncertainty, indicating that their direct impacts on global stock markets are amplified by its endogenous response. Variance decomposition analysis shows that oil price shocks and United States economic uncertainty explain 17% and 6% of long‐run variations in global real stock returns, respectively. These figures have more than tripled when the model is estimated on post 2000 data, suggesting that oil market fundamentals and United States macro uncertainty are an important determinant of global stock market movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ data‐based approaches to identify the transmissions of structural shocks among investor attention measured by Google search queries, realised volatilities and trading volumes in the United States, the United Kingdom and the German stock market. The two identification approaches adopted for the structural vector autoregressive analysis are based on independent component analysis and the informational content of disproportional variance changes. Our results show robust evidence that investors' attention affects both volatilities and trading volumes contemporaneously, whereas the latter two variables lack immediate impacts on investors' attention. Some movements in investors' attention can be traced back to market sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose to add ranking restrictions on impulse‐responses to sign restrictions to narrow the identified set in vector autoregressions (VARs). Ranking restrictions come from micro data on heterogeneous industries in VARs, bounds on elasticities, or restrictions on dynamics. Using both a fully Bayesian conditional uniform prior and prior‐robust inference, we show that these restrictions help to identify productivity news shocks in the data. In the prior‐robust paradigm, ranking restrictions, but not sign restrictions alone, imply that news shocks raise output temporarily, but significantly. This holds both in an application with rankings in the form of heterogeneity restrictions and in another applications with slope restrictions as rankings. Ranking restrictions also narrow bounds on variance decompositions. For example, the bound of the contribution of news shocks to the forecast error variance of output narrows by about 30 pp at the one‐year horizon. While misspecification can be a concern with added restrictions, they are consistent with the data in our applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a naturally occurring phenomenon that affects weather around the world. Past ENSO episodes have had severe impacts on the economy of Colombia. We study the influence of ENSO on Colombian coffee production, exports, and price. Our structural econometric specification is consistent with an economic model of the market for Colombian coffee which, in the short run, is characterized by a downward‐sloping demand curve and by a vertical supply curve. We show that El Niño (i.e., positive shocks to ENSO) is beneficial for Colombian production and exports and decreases the real price of Colombian coffee. On the contrary, La Niña (i.e., negative shocks to ENSO) depresses Colombian coffee production and exports and increases price. However, the overall impact of ENSO shocks is small. Both in the short run and in the long run, shocks to international demand for Colombian coffee are more relevant than supply‐side shocks in Colombia in explaining the dynamics of the price of Colombian coffee. Our results suggest that a given coffee price shock can have beneficial, detrimental, or negligible effects on the Colombian economy, depending on its underlying cause. As a consequence, policy responses to coffee price shocks should be designed by looking at the causes of the shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study investigates reactions to real exchange rate changes in the German, French and UK automobile and mechanical engineering sectors using monthly data from 1995 to 2010. Our findings indicate that EUR/US$ appreciations hamper exports, but do not necessarily imply an aggravated business climate or export order‐book assessment. This does not apply to the GBP/US$ and corresponding time series for the UK. First and foremost, our fixed coefficient and time‐varying parameter VAR model estimates confirm the extraordinary role of the German key sectors, while currency union membership seems to play a minor role at best. Overall, the exchange rate susceptibility is less profound than claimed by lobbies and held as popular belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent booms and busts in commodity prices have generated concerns that financial speculation causes excessive commodity-price comovement, driving prices away from levels implied by supply and demand under rational expectations. We develop a structural vector autoregression model of a commodity futures market and use it to explain two recent spikes in cotton prices. In doing so, we make two contributions to the literature on commodity price dynamics. First, we estimate the extent to which cotton price booms and busts can be attributed to comovement with other commodities. Finding such comovement would be necessary but would not be sufficient evidence to establish that broad-based financial speculation drives commodity prices. Second, after controlling for aggregate demand and comovement, we develop a new method to point identify shocks to precautionary demand for cotton separately from shocks to current supply and demand. To do so, we use differences in volatility across time implied by the rational expectations competitive storage model. We find limited evidence that financial speculation caused cotton prices to spike in 2008 or 2011. We conclude that the 2008 price spike was driven mostly by precautionary demand for cotton, and the 2011 spike was caused by a net supply shortfall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Central Bank publishes inflation projections quarterly and we aim to establish empirically whether they influence private inflation forecasts and whether they may be considered as an enhanced means of implementing policy decisions by facilitating private agents' information processing. We provide original evidence that ECB inflation projections do influence private inflation expectations positively, and that ECB projections convey signals about future ECB rate movements. This paper suggests that ECB projections enable private agents to correctly interpret and predict policy decisions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interdependence of China's policy uncertainty, the global oil market and stock market returns in China. A structural VAR model is estimated that shows that a positive shock to economic policy uncertainty in China has a delayed negative effect on global oil production, real oil prices and real stock market returns. Shocks to oil market-specific demand significantly raise China's economic policy uncertainty and reduce the real stock market returns. As measured by a spillover index, the interdependence between these variables has been rising since 2003 as China's influence in the oil market has increased. An equivalent spillover index calculated for the US is smaller and has been largely flat over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inflation illusion hypothesis of Modigliani and Cohn () has received renewed attention in explaining a negative relation not only between stock returns and inflation but also between housing returns and inflation. We reexamine the empirical relation in general and the validity of the inflation illusion hypothesis in particular using data from the US, the UK and Korea. We find three key results. (1) The negative relation is particularly strong in recession periods, indicating that the relation is sensitive to business cycles. (2) There are two regimes with positive and negative asset returns and inflation relations for all three countries, and the two-regime relation is found not only for the stock return-inflation relation but also for the housing return-inflation relation. This finding is at odds with the inflation illusion hypothesis because the hypothesis anticipates only a negative relation for both positive inflation and negative inflation. (3) Housing returns Granger-cause inflation, and their dynamic net effect on inflation is significantly positive for all three countries. This is at odds with the inflation illusion hypothesis, which anticipates inflation being related to negative returns. Overall, we find limited evidence for the inflation illusion hypothesis. If there is inflation illusion, only a small fraction of investors suffer from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the international transmission of monetary shocks with a focus on the effects of foreign liquidity on the euro area. We estimate two domestic structural VAR models for the euro area and then we introduce a global liquidity aggregate. The impulse responses show that a positive shock to foreign liquidity leads to permanent increases in the euro area M3 aggregate and the price level, a temporary rise in real output and a temporary appreciation of the euro real effective exchange rate. Moreover, we find that innovations in global liquidity play an important role in explaining price and output fluctuations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a 12-dimensional VAR to examine the aggregate effects of two structural technology shocks and two policy shocks. For each shock, we examine the dynamic effects on the labor market, the importance of the shock for labor market volatility, and the comovement between labor market variables and other key aggregate variables in response to the shock. We document that labor market indicators display “hump-shaped” responses to the identified shocks. Technology shocks and monetary policy shocks are important for labor market volatility but the ranking of their importance is sensitive to the VAR specification. The conditional correlations at business cycle frequencies are similar in response to the four shocks, apart from the correlations between hours worked, labor productivity and real wages. To account for the unconditional correlations between these variables, a mixture of shocks is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the response of seven of the newly acceded countries (NACs) to EU supply and monetary shocks. A typical NAC perceives an EU technology disturbance as a negative supply shock and an EU monetary expansion as a negative demand shock. When we split the seven countries into two groups, results for group 1 which includes the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia suggest that an EU supply shock feeds through as a demand shock, increasing both prices and output. This suggests trade acts as a channel of EU shock propagation. Monetary disturbances explain 2% and 3% of the output fluctuation of group one and two and 10% and 42% of interest rate variations, respectively. EU shocks are identified as given by Canova and De Nicoló (2002) using sign restrictions of the cross-correlation function of the variables' responses to orthogonal disturbances. These restrictions are derived from a DSGE model. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to make a contribution to the recent search for a suitable assessment of the economic feasibility of a higher degree of monetary cooperation in East Asia. By using a structural vector autoregression approach as well as a generalized purchasing power parity approach, we find that a larger group of appropriately selected East Asian economies does satisfy the macroeconomic conditions for forming an Optimum Currency Area (OCA). The East Asian group consists of four ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand) and four Northeast Asian economies (Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Republic of Korea, and Taiwan). This finding presents a striking contrast to the existing research results whose policy recommendation has generally been that countries in East Asia should start with a smaller subgroup currency area. It is time that many East Asian economies as a region made a serious effort to pursue a higher degree of monetary cooperation among themselves for forming an OCA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper represents a first attempt to study China's business cycles using a formal analytical framework; namely, a structural VAR model. It is found that (i) demand shocks were the dominant source of macroeconomic fluctuations, but supply shocks had gained more importance over time; (ii) driving forces of demand shocks were consumption and fixed investment in the first cycle of 1985–1990, but shifted to fixed investment and world demand in the second cycle of 1991–1996 and the post-1997 deflation period; and (c) macroeconomic policies did not play an important part either in initiating or counteracting cyclical fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of temporal aggregation on the estimated time series properties of economic data. Theory predicts that temporal aggregation loses information about the underlying data processes. We derive low frequency, quarterly and annual, models implied by high frequency, monthly, structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models and we find that these losses in information are substantial. It is shown that the accuracy of both the estimates and the forecasts of this class of models improve substantially when monthly data are used. Moreover, the aggregated data show more long-run persistence than the underlying disaggregated data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to examine the performance of bootstrap and asymptotic parametric inference methods in structural VAR analysis. The results obtained through a Monte Carlo experiment suggest that the two approaches are largely equivalent in most, but not all, cases. While the asymptotic method turns out to be surprisingly robust with respect to the distribution of the errors, the bootstrap does deliver results superior in terms of both length of the confidence interval and coverage when highly non-linear statistics (such as the components of the variance of the forecast error) are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an introduction to vector autoregression models, explaining their origins and their use for modelling and forecasting. The recent developments of structural modelling and the treatment of nonstationary variables are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]