Structural vector autoregressions (VARs) are widely used to trace out the effect of monetary policy innovations on the economy. However, the sparse information sets typically used in these empirical models lead to at least three potential problems with the results. First, to the extent that central banks and the private sector have information not reflected in the VAR, the measurement of policy innovations is likely to be contaminated. Second, the choice of a specific data series to represent a general economic concept such as “real activity” is often arbitrary to some degree. Third, impulse responses can be observed only for the included variables, which generally constitute only a small subset of the variables that the researcher and policy-maker care about. In this paper we investigate one potential solution to this limited information problem, which combines the standard structural VAR analysis with recent developments in factor analysis for large data sets. We find that the information that our factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) methodology exploits is indeed important to properly identify the monetary transmission mechanism. Overall, our results provide a comprehensive and coherent picture of the effect of monetary policy on the economy.

We estimate the effect of shifts in monetary policy using the term structure of interest rates. In our no-arbitrage model, the short rate follows a version of the Taylor's (1993, “Discretion Versus Policy Rules in Practice”, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, 39, 195–214) rule where the coefficients on the output gap and inflation vary over time. The monetary policy loading on the output gap has averaged around 0·4 and has not changed very much over time. The overall response of the yield curve to output gap components is relatively small. In contrast, the inflation loading has changed substantially over the last 50 years and ranges from close to zero in 2003 to a high of 2·4 in 1983. Long-term bonds are sensitive to inflation policy shifts with increases in inflation loadings leading to higher short rates and widening yield spreads.