Graph-theoretic methods of causal search based in the ideas of Pearl (2000), Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines (2000), and others have been applied by a number of researchers to economic data, particularly by Swanson and Granger (1997) to the problem of finding a data-based contemporaneous causal...

An explication of the key ideas behind the Cointegrated Vector Autoregression Approach. The CVAR approach is related to Haavelmo's famous quot;Probability Approach in Econometricsquot; (1944). It insists on careful stochastic specification as a necessary groundwork for econometric inference and...

David Hendry and Hans-Martin Krolzig have demonstrated that PCGets, an automatic model selection algorithm that implements general-to-specific search procedures, can be successfully applied to the individual equations of vector autoregressions (VARs), provided that the contemporaneous causal...

Graph-theoretic methods of causal search based in the ideas of Pearl (2000), Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines (2000), and others have been applied by a number of researchers to economic data, particularly by Swanson and Granger (1997) to the problem of finding a data-based contemporaneous causal...

An algorithm is developed for the empirical selection of valid instrumental variables based on graph-theoretic causal search (or Bayes-net) methodologies for directed cyclical graphs. The method also helps to identify causal structure when the underlying relationships are simultaneous or...

The paper provides a careful, analytical account of Trygve Haavelmo's unsystematic, but important, use of the analogy between controlled experiments common in the natural sciences and econometric techniques. The experimental analogy forms the linchpin of the methodology for passive observation...

Economics places a high premium on completeness of explanation. Typical general-equilibrium accounts of economic phenomena are preferred to partial equilibrium accounts on the ground that important interactions are necessarily omitted in the latter. A similar preference for microfoundational...

Econometricians tend to hold simultaneously two views in tension with each other: an apparent anti-realism that holds that all models are false and at best useful constructs or approximations to true models and an apparent realism that models are to be judged by their success at capturing an...

Trygve Haavelmo’s The Probability Approach in Econometrics (1944) has been widely regarded as the foundation document of modern econometrics. Nevertheless, its significance has been interpreted in widely different ways. Some modern economists regard it as a blueprint for a provocative, but...