Comparing Two Methods for the Identification of News Shocks

Recent empirical literature delivered, based on different structural VAR approaches, controversial results concerning the role of anticipated technology—news—shocks in business cycle fluctuations. We deal with this controversy and investigate (i) the extent to which two prominent structural VAR approaches can be useful in recuperating news shock dynamics from artificially generated data in general and (ii) why and to what extent these SVAR approaches differ in the results they deliver in particular. Thereby, we provide several insights for the users of both VAR techniques with small samples in practice.

Beaudry, Paul, Franck Portier and Atilim Seymen (2013), Comparing Two Methods for the Identification of News Shocks, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 13-110, Mannheim.