Parameter identification in a estimated New Keynesian open economy model

In this paper, we use Monte Carlo methods to study the small sample properties of the classical maximum likelihood (ML) estimator in artificial samples generated by the New-Keynesian open economy DSGE model estimated by Adolfson et al. (2008) with Bayesian techniques. While asymptotic identification tests show that some of the parameters are weakly identified in the model and by the set of observable variables we consider, we document that ML is unbiased and has low MSE for many key parameters if a suitable set of observable variables are included in the estimation. These findings suggest that we can learn a lot about many of the parameters by confronting the model with data, and hence stand in sharp contrast to the conclusions drawn by Canova and Sala (2009) and Iskrev (2008). Encouraged by our results, we estimate the model using classical techniques on actual data, where we use a new simulation based approach to compute the uncertainty bands for the parameters. From a classical viewpoint, ML estimation leads to a significant improvement in fit relative to the log-likelihood computed with the Bayesian posterior median parameters, but at the expense of some the ML estimates being implausible from a microeconomic viewpoint. We interpret these results to imply that the model at hand suffers from a substantial degree of model misspecification. This interpretation is supported by the DSGE-VAR analysis in Adolfson et al. (2008). Accordingly, we conclude that problems with model misspecification, and not primarily weak identification, is the main challenge ahead in developing quantitative macromodels for policy analysis.