The Persuasiveness of the Use of IRFs Questions

Read the VOX article “Pushing on a String: U.S. Monetary Policy is Less

Powerful During Recessions,” by Sylvana Tenreyro and Gregory Thwaites,

which can be found here: http://voxeu.org/article/monetary-policy-weaker-recessions

This article’s main exhibits are impulse response functions. These IRFs are obtained using vector autoregressions (VARs), but you already have a sense of IRFs in the univariate context from this module’s material, so you can assess the broad takeaways of the article and why the authors may be using IRFs.

To get the ball rolling, start by commenting on the following: How persuasive do you find the use of IRFs? Are IRFs the best way to make the authors’ points or would you argue for another way, be it complementary or entirely different? “Getting the ball rolling” is a guide for the first several posters. Thereafter, please feel free to start commenting on each others’ posts.