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Working Paper
Assessing the macroeconomic impact of bank intermediation shocks: a structural approach
We take a structural approach to assessing the empirical importance of shocks to the supply of bank-intermediated credit in affecting macroeconomic fluctuations. First, we develop a theoretical model to show how credit supply shocks can be transmitted into disruptions in the production economy. Second, we use the unique micro-banking data to identify and support the model's key mechanism. Third, we find that the output effect of credit supply shocks is not only economically and statistically significant but also consistent with the vector autogression evidence. Our mode estimation indicates ...
Working Paper
Identification Through Sparsity in Factor Models
Factor models are generally subject to a rotational indeterminacy, meaning that individual factors are only identified up to a rotation. In the presence of local factors, which only affect a subset of the outcomes, we show that the implied sparsity of the loading matrix can be used to solve this rotational indeterminacy. We further prove that a rotation criterion based on the 1-norm of the loading matrix can be used to achieve identification even under approximate sparsity in the loading matrix. This enables us to consistently estimate individual factors, and to interpret them as structural ...
Working Paper
Assessing International Commonality in Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Its Effects
This paper uses a large vector autoregression to measure international macroeconomic uncertainty and its effects on major economies. We provide evidence of significant commonality in macroeconomic volatility, with one common factor driving strong comovement across economies and variables. We measure uncertainty and its effects with a large model in which the error volatilities feature a factor structure containing time-varying global components and idiosyncratic components. Global uncertainty contemporaneously affects both the levels and volatilities of the included variables. Our new ...
Working Paper
Decomposing the Fiscal Multiplier
Unusual circumstances often coincide with unusual fiscal policy actions. Much attention has been paid to estimates of how fiscal policy affects the macroeconomy, but these are typically average treatment effects. In practice, the fiscal “multiplier” at any point in time depends on the monetary policy response. Using the IMF fiscal consolidations dataset for identification and a new decomposition-based approach, we show how to evaluate these monetary-fiscal effects. In the data, the fiscal multiplier varies considerably with monetary policy: it can be zero, or as large as 2 depending on ...
Working Paper
Minimum distance estimation of possibly non-invertible moving average models
This paper considers estimation of moving average (MA) models with non-Gaussian errors. Information in higher-order cumulants allows identification of the parameters without imposing invertibility. By allowing for an unbounded parameter space, the generalized method of moments estimator of the MA(1) model has classical (root-T and asymptotic normal) properties when the moving average root is inside, outside, and on the unit circle. For more general models where the dependence of the cumulants on the model parameters is analytically intractable, we consider simulation-based estimators with two ...
Working Paper
When Do State-Dependent Local Projections Work?
Many empirical studies estimate impulse response functions that depend on the state of the economy. Most of these studies rely on a variant of the local projection (LP) approach to estimate the state-dependent impulse response functions. Despite its widespread application, the asymptotic validity of the LP approach to estimating state-dependent impulse responses has not been established to date. We formally derive this result for a structural state-dependent vector autoregressive process. The model only requires the structural shock of interest to be identified. A sufficient condition for the ...
Working Paper
Endogenous Uncertainty
We show that macroeconomic uncertainty can be considered as exogenous when assessing its effects on the U.S. economy. Instead, financial uncertainty can at least in part arise as an endogenous response to some macroeconomic developments, and overlooking this channel leads to distortions in the estimated effects of financial uncertainty shocks on the economy. We obtain these empirical findings with an econometric model that simultaneously allows for contemporaneous effects of both uncertainty shocks on economic variables and of economic shocks on uncertainty. While the traditional econometric ...
Working Paper
Sample Selection Models Without Exclusion Restrictions: Parameter Heterogeneity and Partial Identification
This paper studies semiparametric versions of the classical sample selection model (Heckman (1976, 1979)) without exclusion restrictions. We extend the analysis in Honoré and Hu (2020) by allowing for parameter heterogeneity and derive implications of this model. We also consider models that allow for heteroskedasticity and briefly discuss other extensions. The key ideas are illustrated in a simple wage regression for females. We find that the derived implications of a semiparametric version of Heckman's classical sample selection model are consistent with the data for women with no college ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Monetary Policy on Asset Prices
Estimating the response of asset prices to changes in monetary policy is complicated by the endogeneity of policy decisions and the fact that both interest rates and asset prices react to numerous other variables. This paper develops a new estimator that is based on the heteroskedasticity that exists in high frequency data. We show that the response of asset prices to changes in monetary policy can be identified based on the increase in the variance of policy shocks that occurs on days of FOMC meetings and of the Chairman's semi-annual monetary policy testimony to Congress. The identification ...
Working Paper
Inference Based on SVARs Identified with Sign and Zero Restrictions: Theory and Applications
In this paper, we develop algorithms to independently draw from a family of conjugate posterior distributions over the structural parameterization when sign and zero restrictions are used to identify SVARs. We call this family of conjugate posterior distributions normal-generalized-normal. Our algorithms draw from a conjugate uniform-normal-inverse-Wishart posterior over the orthogonal reduced-form parameterization and transform the draws into the structural parameterization; this transformation induces a normal-generalized-normal posterior distribution over the structural parameterization. ...