"This paper develops a new and easily implementable necessary and sufficient condition for the exact identification of a Markov-switching structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. The theorem applies to models with both linear and some nonlinear restrictions on the structural parameters. We...

In 1994 the FOMC began to release statements after each meeting. This paper investigates whether the public'sviews about the current path of the economy and of future policy have been affected by changes in the Federal Reserve's communications policy as reflected in private sector's forecasts of...