Estimation and Inference on Time-Varying FAVAR Models

We introduce a time-varying (TV) factor-augmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) model to capture the TV behavior in the factor loadings and the VAR coefficients. To consistently estimate the TV parameters, we first obtain the unobserved common factors via the local principal component analysis (PCA) and then estimate the TV-FAVAR model via a local smoothing approach. The limiting distribution of the proposed estimators is established. To gauge possible sources of TV features in the FAVAR model, we propose three L-2-distance-based test statistics and study their asymptotic properties under the null and local alternatives. Simulation studies demonstrate the excellent finite sample performance of the proposed estimators and tests. In an empirical application to the U.S. macroeconomic dataset, we document overwhelming evidence of structural changes in the FAVAR model and show that the TV-FAVAR model outperforms the conventional time-invariant FAVAR model in predicting certain key macroeconomic series.