The Use of Long-Run Restrictions for the Identification of Technology Shocks

The authors survey the recent empirical literature using long-run restrictions to identify technology shocks and provide an illustrative walk-through of the long-run restricted vector autoregression (VAR) methodology in a bivariate framework. Additionally, they offer an alternative identification of technology shocks that can be imposed by restrictions on the long-run impulse responses to evaluate the robustness of the conclusions drawn by the structural VAR literature. Their results from this methodology compare favorably with the empirical literature that uses structural VARs to identify technology shocks.