Forming Priors for DSGE Models (and How It Affects the Assessment of Nominal Rigidities)

Marco Del Negro () and Frank Schorfheide ()

No 6119, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: In Bayesian analysis of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) prior distributions for some of the taste-and-technology parameters can be obtained from microeconometric or pre-sample evidence, but it is difficult to elicit priors for the parameters that govern the law of motion of unobservable exogenous processes. Moreover, since it is challenging to formulate beliefs about the correlation of parameters, most researchers assume that all model parameters are independent of each other. We provide a simple method of constructing prior distributions for (a subset of) DSGE model parameters from beliefs about the moments of the endogenous variables. We use our approach to investigate the importance of nominal rigidities and show how the specification of prior distributions affects our assessment of the relative importance of different frictions.

Keywords: Bayesian analysis; DSGE models; model comparisons; nominal rigidities; prior elicitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-dge, nep-ecm and nep-mac
Date: 2007-02
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Related works:
Working Paper: Forming Priors for DSGE Models (and How it Affects the Assessment of Nominal Rigidities) (2008)
Working Paper: Forming priors for DSGE models (and how it affects the assessment of nominal rigidities) (2008)
Working Paper: Forming priors for DSGE models (and how it affects the assessment of nominal rigidities) (2006)
Journal Article: Forming priors for DSGE models (and how it affects the assessment of nominal rigidities) (2008)
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