News Shocks, Information Flows and SVARs

This paper assesses SVARs as relevant tools at identifying the dynamic effects or news shocks, Because of the misalignment between the econometrician and private agents' information sets resulting from foresight the dynamic responses identified from SVARs using either long-run and short-run restrictions are biased. However the bias vanishes when news shocks account for the bulk of fluctuations in the economy. Furthermore under this condition. he two identified shocks have a correlation close to unity validating the sequential identification approach adopted by BEAUDRY and PORTIER (2006)