Through the Looking Glass: Indirect Inference via Simple Equilibria

This paper proposes an indirect inference (Gourieroux, Monfort and Renault, 1993; Smith, 1993) estimation method for a large class of dynamic equilibrium models. The authors' approach is based on the observation that the econometric structure of these systems naturally generates auxiliary equilibria that can serve as building blocks for estimation. They use this insight to develop an accurate estimator for the long-run risk model of Bansal and Yaron (2004). The authors demonstrate the accuracy of our method by Monte Carlo simulation and estimate the long-run risk model on U.S. data. They also illustrate the good performance of the methodology on an asset pricing model with investor learning.