Final Exam Flashcards
(81 cards)
What is an eigenfactor?
The degree to which eigenvectors are blown up or squashed.
What happens to the AR(1) model when |B(1)| = 1?
The process drift off with infinite variance.
The so-called “random walk”.
When the eigenvalues of A(1) are less than 1, what is true of VAR(1)?
It is stable.
What is a stationary process?
One that’s autocovariances do not depend on time.
Mathematically, how does the MA(1) process show that older shocks matter less?
The A(1) coefficients, which are necessarily less than one, are raised to increasingly higher powers.
So they approach zero.
The autocorrelations of the stochastic process can be reformulated to create a (…)
VAR
When can you use OLS on a systems of equations?
When all the regressors are the same.
How do you estimate the betas of a VAR?
(i) Force in the form: X = BZ + U; (i) use the formula: Bhat = XZ’(ZZ’)^(-1).
What does a correlation between a shock to inflation and GDP mean in the real world?
That the shock to GDP is also a shock to inflation in that % of cases.
What does theory say an IRF should measure?
The isolated effect of a shock to one variable on another.
If we don’t orthogonalize, what does the IRF actually measure?
The cumulative effect of a shock to one variable on all other variables in the system.
What do all positive definite matrices have?
A Choleski Decomposition
When is a matrix positive definite?
When: z’A(z) > 0
or: all eigenvalues > 0
What does positive defintieness mean, intuitively?
That matrix A will not reflect vector x in the opposite direction.
What is true of the variance-covariance matrix of w(t-i)?
It is diagonal.
What is the orthogonal representation of our VAR?
x(t) = Mu + Sum(O(i)w(t-i))
How does one caculate the effect of a shock post-orthogonalization?
IRF: x(t) = Mu + o(i)P
What is the decomposition of w(t-i)?
w(t-i) = P^(-1)u(t-i)
What is the decomposition of O(i)?
O(i) = o(i)P
What does the orthogonalized shock w(1, t) depend on?
The unorthogonalized shock u(1, t)
What does the orthogonalized shock w(k, t) depend on?
All of the unorthogonalized shocks u(1,t), u(2,t), … ,u(k,t)
What is the heirarchical structure of assumptions?
That the order of the variables in an orthogonalized VAR matters, with the first being most important and affected by no other variables.
What are the two main identification strategies for dealing with the heirarchical structure of assumptions?
(i) Argue that the order of the variables is jusfied by economic thoery; or (ii) caculate the orthogonalized VAR for every possible ordering and show that the answer does no depend on it.
What is L^(2)x(t)?
x(t-2)