VAR vs SVAR what is the difference

 What is the difference between SVAR and VAR

by: Editor in Chief

    

 424 Shares     

Posted by: admin 2 years, 8 months ago

(3 Comments)

by DM

Learn things especially in coding need a practice. Lets put it into work then. Today we are going to enthusiatly dig deeper between what is VAR and what is structural VAR. 

Quote

PhD is when you are trying to explain something and get so enthusiatly love about it.

The difference between VAR and SVAR 

Check my latest publication in SVAR from Eurasian Economic Review

 

VAR or vector autoregression 

Var or vector autoregression or unstructured vector autoregression is a way of learning the relationship between one variable without structural limitations such as time. However, the problem with VAR is that sometimes there is no particular rule on seeing both data related to each other. For example, in monetary policy, let's say we want to control the inflation of the price; as we expect inflation to rise, the monetary authority will increase its instrument and the interest rate and expect the commodity price to go down. It turns out that the price is not going down; instead, it is rising. Then, without any rule in conclusion, opening the tide of economic mystery, we will conclude that raising the interest rate will also increase inflation or commodity prices. 

Learn in the video below. 

SVAR or Structural vector autoregression

Meanwhile, structural vector autoregression is similar to vector autoregression but with many more constraints, for example, time. One of the differences is in the sample. For example, the government attempted to reduce inflation by increasing the interest rate. In the unstructured vector autoregression, when increasing the interest rate rises inflation, we just read it as it is, which will create an erroneous conclusion. Meanwhile, in structure vector autoregression, we have a time duration that can help explain when the price increases, in which period the inflation goes down or starts to take effect, and whether it's significant. 

Some explanations in the video format

Here, I found a couple of great videos about SVAR 

1. Why SVAR

Svar is a fascinating development in macroeconomics from Christopher Sims. From this video, for example, when the bank anticipates inflation while buying releases more money, the inflation still rises. The wrong conclusion is that the interest rate hike led to inflation. But the monetary policy is an endogenous reaction to expected inflation.  The same issue occurred with fiscal policy; for example, we expect that there will be a reduction in private demand and, therefore, an increase in public spending, and the output will still decline. The wrong conclusion is that public spending will cause the work to fall. However, fiscal policy reacted endogenously with the reduction in production.  To measure the effect of policy, we need to identify or isolate purely exogenous independent movements and how the economy reacts to them. It is called impulse reaction.&nbsp Therefore, we need to identify the structural model that isolates the exogenous variable from the model. After the shock hits the economy, getting the structural model is called identification.  According to Sims (1986), Identification is the interpretation of historically observed variation in data in a way that allows the variation to be used to predict the consequences of an action not yet undertaken.  After the structure is identified, one can predict inflation and output growth. And we can expect the fiscal effect on GDP. 

2. The calculation behind SVAR

ok 

How to identify purely exogenous shock 

Let's say we have 

$$A{X}_t={\beta }_0+\beta X_{t-1}+u_t$$ 

From the explanation above, the vector $X$ relies on its lag itself and structural shock$$u$$. 

if we assume that X has 2 variables, which is GDP gap y and interest rate r: it become

$$X_t=\left[\begin{array}{c}y\\ r\end{array}\right]$$

and make the system become

$$\begin{array}{c}{y}_t+a_{12}{r}_t={\beta }_{10}+{\beta }_{11}{y}_{t-1}+{\beta }_{12}{r}_{t-1}+u_{yt}\\ a_{21}{y}_t+r_t={\beta }_{20}+{\beta }_{21}{y}_{t-1}+{\beta }_{22}{r}_{t-1}+u_{rt}\end{array}$$

Where it can be written in matrix form

$$\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& a_{12}\\ a_{21}& 1\end{array}\right]\left[\begin{array}{c}{y}_t\\ r_t\end{array}\right]=\left[\begin{array}{c}{\beta }_{10}\\ {\beta }_{20}\end{array}\right]\left[\begin{array}{cc}{\beta }_{11}& {\beta }_{12}\\ {\beta }_{21}& {\beta }_{22}\end{array}\right]\left[\begin{array}{c}{y}_{t-1}\\ r_{t-1}\end{array}\right]+\left[\begin{array}{c}{u}_{yt}\\ u_{rt}\end{array}\right]$$

where 

$$A=\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& a_{12}\\ a_{21}& 1\end{array}\right]$$

What are identity matrices? Check this video also 

And also, what is inverse matrices

How to find inverse matrix

Test the matrix 

In Matrix A, the constants 1 and 1 show a contemporary relationship.

$$\begin{array}{ccc}1& 2& 3\\ a& b& c\end{array}$$

test the matrix 

$$\left[\begin{array}{ccc}1& 2& 3\\ a& b& c\end{array}\right]$$

\[ \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 2 & 3 \\ a & b & c \end{bmatrix} \]

3. 

Another interesting topic

what is a structural var

var and svar in market risk

library vars

svar model in r

var vs svar risk

svar model example

var in stata

vars package in r

Test cinematic front-face camera

thanks

Reference

Dąbrowski, M.A., Widiantoro, D.M. Effectiveness and conduct of macroprudential policy in Indonesia in 2003–2020: Evidence from the structural VAR models. Eurasian Econ Rev 13, 703–731 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40822-023-00244-w