🌍 Week 11 Homework — Feedback

Student: Islomjon Shermirzaev Assignment: VAR Estimation and Identification

✅ Overall Assessment

Result: ✅ Pass

Excellent submission. The code is impressive as it downloads the data directly from FRED using the API/URLs, ensuring the most up-to-date analysis. The implementation of the VAR and IRFs is correct.

🔍 Task-by-Task Check

Task Description Status Notes
1.1 Data Loading & Cleanup ✅ Excellent: Downloads data directly from FRED URLs
1.2 Data Transformation ✅ Correctly computes annualized growth rates and handles monthly-to-quarterly conversion for FFR
1.3 Construct Data Matrices ✅ Correct setup of VAR matrices
1.4 OLS Estimation ✅ Correct matrix OLS estimation
1.5 Extract A1 Matrix ✅ Correct extraction of A1
1.6 Residuals & Sigma ✅ Correct covariance calculation
1.7 Identification (Cholesky) ✅ Correct Cholesky decomposition
1.8 Compute IRFs ✅ Correct loop for IRF generation
1.9 Plot IRFs ✅ Generates clear plots for the rate shock
1.10 Save Figures ⚠️ Plot is generated but not saved to file (missing saveas)

📈 Technical Implementation

  • Data Handling: The use of readtable with FRED URLs and retime to convert monthly FFR to quarterly is very advanced and good practice.
  • Analysis: Includes a Phillips Curve estimation as well.

💬 Style & Clarity

  • Robustness: Includes try-catch block for the internet download, which is excellent.
  • Clarity: Code is well-organized.

📊 Visual Output Assessment

  • Plots: Clear subplots for the IRFs.
  • Missing: Figures are not saved to disk programmatically.

✅ Suggestions for Improvement

  1. Saving: Add saveas(gcf, 'Figures/IRF.png') to save your results automatically.

🎯 Summary

Great work. The automated data downloading is a standout feature.

Grade Level: ✅ Pass (9/10 tasks correct - missing save command)