On Fri, 11 Nov 2022, Cottrell, Allin wrote:
On Fri, Nov 11, 2022 at 5:28 AM Agustín Alonso Rodríguez
<aalonso(a)rcumariacristina.com> wrote:
>
> How to refine or simplify a VAR model suppressing the insignificant estimated coefs?
You have a reply from Sven, noting that gretl does not currently have
a built-in procedure for what you describe. That's true, but I'll
offer a somewhat different perspective.
When you estimate a VAR with p lags of each variable, you should not
be too concerned with the "statistical significance" of each
coefficient -- and not too quick to eliminate terms that are
"insignificant". If the VAR is in levels, in particular, it's likely
that the several lags of a given variable will be strongly correlated.
This then gives you the classic "multicollinearity" effect, whereby
each individual coefficient may be "insignificant" yet a joint test
strongly rejects the null hypothesis that the "collinear" variables
all have coefficients equal to zero. Gretl shows you the joint (F)
tests after estimating a VAR -- that is, tests for Granger causality
-- and you might be better off using these to eliminate one or more
variables from your specification (if warranted) rather than worrying
about individual lagged terms.
agree 100%
Let me just add: as is well known, it is true that VARs may suffer from
dimensionality problems: with T observations, k variables and p lags it
may well be that the degrees of freedoms get exhausted when k and p are
large and T is small
There is a large literature on the possible remedies to this problem, and
most solutions are based on some sort of shrinkage procedure. As Sven
said, the most traditional solution (Bayesian VARs) is in the works as a
future function package. Youngsters are reported to prefer fancier and
trendier stuff, such a LASSO VARs or similar. I have no news of anyone
interested in these in the gretl community, but if anybody out there is,
please speak up.
-------------------------------------------------------
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
-------------------------------------------------------