The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the methodology known as Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) analysis and to examine its applicability in the context of Irish macroeconomics. The SVAR approach has been developed over the last decade to interpret business cycle fluctuations and to help identify the effects of different economic policies. It is an extension on the t...

the main goal of this study is to identify the determinants of the energy intensity in the iranian economy using annual data for the period 1974-2012. changes in energy intensity can be seen as related to three factors including price, income, and autonomous energy efficiency improvements (based on technical progress). moreover the role of energy quality in enhancement of total factor productiv...

The main substantive finding of the recent structural vector autoregression literature with a difference specification of hours (DSVAR) is that technology shocks lead to a fall in hours. Researchers have used these results to argue that standard business cycle models in which technology shocks leads to a rise in hours should be discarded. We test the DSVAR approach by asking the following: Is t...

This paper examines the usefulness of applying structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) to the study of business cycles. The SVAR approach aims to provide robust inferences, by imposing only weak theoretical restrictions. We illustrate that the robustness of conclusions drawn from SVAR exercises are questionable. We also examine the problem of identification failure in structural VAR models. ©...

The intertemporal current account approach predicts that the current account of a small open economy is independent of global shocks, and that responses of the current account to countryspecific shocks depend on the persistence of the shocks. The author shows that these predictions impose cross-equation restrictions (CERS) on a structural vector autoregression (SVAR). To test the CERs, the auth...

Conventional structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models with Gaussian errors are not identified, and additional identifying restrictions are typically imposed in applied work. We show that the Gaussian case is an exception in that a SVAR model whose error vector consists of independent non-Gaussian components is, without any additional restrictions, identified and leads to (essentially) uni...

Economic theories show that the direction and magnitude of the fluctuations of economic variables depend on the type and magnitude of the shocks they are faced with. Various reasons are noted for fluctuations in demands for imports, including productivity shocks. Accordingly, this research was aimed at identifying the effects of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) shocks of the agricultural sector ...

Structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models have emerged as a dominant research strategy in empirical macroeconomics, but suffer from the large number of parameters employed and the resulting estimation uncertainty associated with their impulse responses. In this paper we propose general-to-specific model selection procedures to overcome these limitations. After showing that single-equation ...

In structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models identifying restrictions for shocks and impulse responses are usually derived from economic theory or institutional constraints. Sometimes the restrictions are insufficient for identifying all shocks and impulse responses. In this paper it is pointed out that specific distributional assumptions can also help in identifying the structural shocks....