We propose a new approach to analyze economic shocks. Our new procedure identifies economic shocks as exogenous shifts in a function; hence, we call them “ functional shocks.” We show how to identify such shocks and how to trace their effects in the economy via VARs using “ ...

It is common in empirical macroeconomics to fit vector autoregressive (VAR) models to construct estimates of impulse responses. An important preliminary step in impulse response analysis is the selection of the VAR lag order. In this paper, we compare the six lag-order selection criteria most...