We identify structural vector autoregressions using narrative sign restrictions. Narrative sign restrictions constrain the structural shocks and the historical decomposition around key historical events, ensuring that they agree with the established narrative account of these episodes. Using...

Alternative modeling strategies for specifying subset VAR models are considered. It is shown that under certain conditions a testing procedure based on t-ratios is equivalent to sequentially eliminating lags that lead to the largest improvement in a prespecified model selection criterion. A...

Dynamic factor models and external instrument identification are two recent advances in the empirical macroeconomic literature. This paper combines the two approaches in order to study the effects of monetary policy shocks. I use this novel framework to re-examine the effects found by Forni and...