This paper reconsiders the degree to which the sign patterns of hypothesized structural arrays limit the possible outcomes for the sign pattern of the corresponding estimated reduced form. To now, the conditions under which any such restrictions would apply were believed to be very narrow, are...

As currently practiced, the analysis of an economic model's qualitative properties is very restricted and rarely productive. This paper provides an approach for conducting an expanded qualitative analysis that can be applied to any economic model. The method proposed will enable the qualitative...

The derived structural estimates of the system beta Y = gamma Z | delta U impose identifying restrictions on the reduced form estimates ex post. Some or all of the derived structural estimates are presented as evidence of the model’s efficacy. In fact, the reduced form inherits a great...

A recent literature, e.g., Lady and Buck (2011), has shown that a qualitative analysis of a model’s structural and estimated reduced form arrays can provide a robust procedure for assessing if a model’s hypothesized structure has been falsified. This paper shows that the even...

This paper shows that a qualitative analysis can always be used in evaluating a model's validity both in general and compared to other hypothesized models. The analysis relates the sign patterns and possibly other information of hypothesized structural arrays to the sign pattern of the estimated...

This paper proposes a method for assessing the information content and validity of a mathematical structural model for which only the directions of influence among its endogenous and exogenous variables are known, as expressed by the sign patterns of associated arrays. The traditional literature...