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Minnesota-type adaptive hierarchical priors for large Bayesian VARs

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  • Joshua C. C. Chan
Abstract
Large Bayesian VARs with stochastic volatility are increasingly used in empirical macroeconomics. The key to make these highly parameterized VARs useful is the use of shrinkage priors. We develop a family of priors that captures the best features of two prominent classes of shrinkage priors: adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors. Like the adaptive hierarchical priors, these new priors ensure that only ‘small’ coefficients are strongly shrunk to zero, while ‘large’ coefficients remain intact. At the same time, these new priors can also incorporate many useful features of the Minnesota priors, such as cross-variable shrinkage and shrinking coefficients on higher lags more aggressively. We introduce a fast posterior sampler to estimate BVARs with this family of priors - for a BVAR with 25 variables and 4 lags, obtaining 10,000 posterior draws takes about 3 minutes on a standard desktop. In a forecasting exercise, we show that these new priors outperform both adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua C. C. Chan, 2019. "Minnesota-type adaptive hierarchical priors for large Bayesian VARs," CAMA Working Papers 2019-61, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    • Handle: RePEc:een:camaaa:2019-61
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    Cited by:

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    2. Cross, Jamie L. & Hou, Chenghan & Koop, Gary & Poon, Aubrey, 2023. "Large stochastic volatility in mean VARs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 236(1).
    3. Martin Feldkircher & Florian Huber & Gary Koop & Michael Pfarrhofer, 2022. "APPROXIMATE BAYESIAN INFERENCE AND FORECASTING IN HUGE‐DIMENSIONAL MULTICOUNTRY VARs," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1625-1658, November.
    4. Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2022. "Specification Choices in Quantile Regression for Empirical Macroeconomics," Working Papers 22-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    5. Milas, Costas & Panagiotidis, Theodore & Papapanagiotou, Georgios, 2024. "UK Foreign Direct Investment in uncertain economic times," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    6. Chan, Joshua C.C., 2023. "Comparing stochastic volatility specifications for large Bayesian VARs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 1419-1446.
    7. Yu Bai & Andrea Carriero & Todd E. Clark & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2022. "Macroeconomic forecasting in a multi‐country context," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(6), pages 1230-1255, September.
    8. Jan Prüser & Florian Huber, 2024. "Nonlinearities in macroeconomic tail risk through the lens of big data quantile regressions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 269-291, March.
    9. Todd E. Clark & Florian Huber & Gary Koop & Massimiliano Marcellino & Michael Pfarrhofer, 2023. "Tail Forecasting With Multivariate Bayesian Additive Regression Trees," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(3), pages 979-1022, August.
    10. Wu, Ping & Koop, Gary, 2023. "Estimating the ordering of variables in a VAR using a Plackett–Luce prior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    11. Hauzenberger, Niko & Huber, Florian & Klieber, Karin, 2023. "Real-time inflation forecasting using non-linear dimension reduction techniques," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 901-921.
    12. Jamie L. Cross & Chenghan Hou & Gary Koop, 2021. "Macroeconomic Forecasting with Large Stochastic Volatility in Mean VARs," Working Papers No 04/2021, Centre for Applied Macro- and Petroleum economics (CAMP), BI Norwegian Business School.
    13. Lukas Berend & Jan Pruser, 2024. "The Transmission of Monetary Policy via Common Cycles in the Euro Area," Papers 2410.05741, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    14. Martin Feldkircher & Luis Gruber & Florian Huber & Gregor Kastner, 2024. "Sophisticated and small versus simple and sizeable: When does it pay off to introduce drifting coefficients in Bayesian vector autoregressions?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(6), pages 2126-2145, September.
    15. Martin, Gael M. & Frazier, David T. & Maneesoonthorn, Worapree & Loaiza-Maya, Rubén & Huber, Florian & Koop, Gary & Maheu, John & Nibbering, Didier & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2024. "Bayesian forecasting in economics and finance: A modern review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 811-839.
    16. Gael M. Martin & David T. Frazier & Ruben Loaiza-Maya & Florian Huber & Gary Koop & John Maheu & Didier Nibbering & Anastasios Panagiotelis, 2023. "Bayesian Forecasting in the 21st Century: A Modern Review," Monash Econometrics and Business Statistics Working Papers 1/23, Monash University, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics.
    17. Nonejad, Nima, 2023. "Modeling the out-of-sample predictive relationship between equity premium, returns on the price of crude oil and economic policy uncertainty using multivariate time-varying dimension models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    18. Hauber, Philipp, 2022. "Real-time nowcasting with sparse factor models," EconStor Preprints 251551, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    19. Luis Gruber & Gregor Kastner, 2022. "Forecasting macroeconomic data with Bayesian VARs: Sparse or dense? It depends!," Papers 2206.04902, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    20. Prüser, Jan & Blagov, Boris, 2022. "Improving inference and forecasting in VAR models using cross-sectional information," Ruhr Economic Papers 960, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    shrinkage prior; forecasting; stochastic volatility; structural VAR;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C11 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Bayesian Analysis: General
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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