IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jeurec/v16y2018i4p1069-1093..html

Are Small-Scale SVARs Useful for Business Cycle Analysis? Revisiting Nonfundamentalness

Author

Listed:
  • Fabio Canova
  • Mehdi Hamidi Sahneh

Abstract

Nonfundamentalness arises when current and past values of the observables do not contain enough information to recover structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) disturbances. Using Granger causality tests, the literature suggested that several small-scale SVAR models are nonfundamental and thus not necessarily useful for business cycle analysis. We show that causality tests are problematic when SVAR variables cross-sectionally aggregate the variables of the underlying economy or proxy for nonobservables. We provide an alternative testing procedure, illustrate its properties with Monte Carlo simulations, and re-examine a prototypical small-scale SVAR model.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabio Canova & Mehdi Hamidi Sahneh, 2018. "Are Small-Scale SVARs Useful for Business Cycle Analysis? Revisiting Nonfundamentalness," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 1069-1093.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:16:y:2018:i:4:p:1069-1093.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvx032
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pagan, Adrian & Robinson, Tim, 2022. "Excess shocks can limit the economic interpretation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    2. Laurent Ferrara & Luca Metelli & Filippo Natoli & Daniele Siena, 2020. "Questioning the puzzle: Fiscal policy, exchange rate and inflation," Working papers 752, Banque de France.
    3. Paul Beaudry & Patrick Feve & Alain Guay & Franck Portier, 2019. "When is Nonfundamentalness in SVARs a Real Problem?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 34, pages 221-243, October.
    4. Fabrice Dabiré, 2022. "Forward guidance and the exchange rate: A theoretical sign restricted VAR analysis," Cahiers de recherche 22-03, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    5. Batini, Nicoletta & Di Serio, Mario & Fragetta, Matteo & Melina, Giovanni & Waldron, Anthony, 2022. "Building back better: How big are green spending multipliers?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    6. Fabio Canova & Filippo Ferroni, 2022. "Mind the Gap! Stylized Dynamic Facts and Structural Models," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 104-135, October.
    7. Giovanni Angelini & Giovanni Caggiano & Efrem Castelnuovo & Luca Fanelli, 2023. "Are Fiscal Multipliers Estimated with Proxy‐SVARs Robust?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 85(1), pages 95-122, February.
    8. Giovanni Angelini & Giovanni Caggiano & Efrem Castelnuovo & Luca Fanelli, 2020. "Are Fiscal Multipliers Estimated with Proxy-SVARs Robust?," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0257, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    9. Ferrara, Laurent & Metelli, Luca & Natoli, Filippo & Siena, Daniele, 2021. "Questioning the puzzle: Fiscal policy, real exchange rate and inflation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    10. Angelini, Giovanni & Sorge, Marco M., 2021. "Under the same (Chole)sky: DNK models, timing restrictions and recursive identification of monetary policy shocks," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    11. Laumer, Sebastian & Violaris, Andreas-Entony, 2024. "Unconventional monetary policy and policy foresight," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    12. Efrem Castelnuovo & Guay Lim, 2019. "What Do We Know About the Macroeconomic Effects of Fiscal Policy? A Brief Survey of the Literature on Fiscal Multipliers," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 52(1), pages 78-93, March.
    13. Mario Forni & Luca Gambetti & Luca Sala, 2018. "Fundamentalness, Granger Causality and Aggregation," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 139, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    14. Paul Levine & Joseph Pearlman & Alessio Volpicella & Bo Yang, 2022. "The Use and Mis-Use of SVARs for Validating DSGE Models," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0522, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    15. Ageliki Anagnostou & Piotr Krajewski & Katarzyna Pilat, 2020. "Regional Specific Idiosyncrasies and Fiscal Policy: Evidence from 47 Regions of the Central and Eastern European Countries," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 1), pages 936-954.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jeurec:v:16:y:2018:i:4:p:1069-1093.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jeea .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.