Two main objectives of Structural Vector AutoRegression (SVAR) modeling are recovering structural shocks from reduced form shocks and Impulse-Response Analysis and Forecast error variance decomposition. As is well known, the first of these is possible only if the number of structural shocks is...

Since Christopher Sims’s Macroeconomics and Realityʺ (1980), macroeconomists have used structural VARs, or vector autoregressions, for policy analysis. Constructing the impulseresponse functions and variance decompositions that are central to this literature requires factoring the...

Structural innovations in multivariate dynamic systems are typically hidden and often identified by means of a-priori economic reasoning. Under multivariate Gaussian model innovations there is no loss measure available to distinguish alternative orderings of variables or, put differently,...

This paper investigates the impacts and responses of macroeconomic shocks in some domestic economies in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1961-99; more specifically, it seeks to answer the question of whether there are any systematic differences in the responses of the CFA franc zones and the...

Since Christopher Sims's quot;Macroeconomics and Realityquot; (1980), macroeconomists have used structural VARs, or vector autoregressions, for policy analysis. Constructing the impulse response functions and variance decompositions that are central to this literature requires factoring the...