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Bayesian VAR and VARX Modeling
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Consider the VAR(
) model
or
When the parameter vector
has a prior multivariate normal distribution with known mean
and covariance matrix
, the prior density is written as
The likelihood function for the Gaussian process becomes
Therefore, the posterior density is derived as
where the posterior mean is
and the posterior covariance matrix is
In practice, the prior mean
and the prior variance
need to be specified. If all the parameters are considered to shrink toward zero, the null prior mean should be specified. According to Litterman (1986), the prior variance can be given by
where
is the prior variance of the
th element of
,
is the prior standard deviation of the diagonal elements of
,
is a constant in the interval
, and
is the
th diagonal element of
. The deterministic terms have diffused prior variance. In practice, you replace the
by the diagonal element of the ML estimator of
in the nonconstrained model.
For example, for a bivariate BVAR(2) model,
with the prior covariance matrix
For the Bayesian estimation of integrated systems, the prior mean is set to the first lag of each variable equal to one in its own equation and all other coefficients at zero. For example, for a bivariate BVAR(2) model,
Bayesian VARX Modeling
The Bayesian vector autoregressive model with exogenous variables is called the BVARX(
,
) model. The form of the BVARX(
,
) model can be written as
The parameter estimates can be obtained by representing the general form of the multivariate linear model,
The prior means for the AR coefficients are the same as those specified in BVAR(
). The prior means for the exogenous coefficients are set to zero.
Some examples of the Bayesian VARX model are as follows:
model y1 y2 = x1 / p=1 xlag=1 prior;
model y1 y2 = x1 / p=(1 3) xlag=1 nocurrentx
prior=(lambda=0.9 theta=0.1);