Our data cover sixteen major industrial sectors from nine countries in the Trans-Pacific region. We apply a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) approach (Bernanke, Boivin, and Eliasz, 2005) to reduce the dimension of our data and to simulate the transmission of shocks from the Trans-Pacific region to the US. FAVAR has two advantages compared with traditional VAR. First, it can incorporate a broader set of information related to the unknown transmission mechanism by utilizing detailed sectoral data. As Maier and Vasishtha (2013) note, this is particularly relevant when the international transmission mechanism involves more than two countries. Second, FAVAR allows us to study the transmission of shocks in several dimensions using the same large dataset, i.e. study the effect of overall and sectoral shocks in the Trans-Pacific on US economy, both overall as well as on sectors. To identify shocks, we use both trade statistics and information in the US input-output
Our data cover sixteen major industrial sectors from nine countries in the Trans-Pacific region. We apply a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) approach (Bernanke, Boivin, and Eliasz, 2005) to reduce the dimension of our data and to simulate the transmission of shocks from the Trans-Pacific region to the US. FAVAR has two advantages compared with traditional VAR. First, it can incorporate a broader set of information related to the unknown transmission mechanism by utilizing detailed sectoral data. As Maier and Vasishtha (2013) note, this is particularly relevant when the international transmission mechanism involves more than two countries. Second, FAVAR allows us to study the transmission of shocks in several dimensions using the same large dataset, i.e. study the effect of overall and sectoral shocks in the Trans-Pacific on US economy, both overall as well as on sectors. To identify shocks, we use both trade statistics and information in the US input-output