Graph-theoretic methods of causal search based in the ideas of Pearl (2000), Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines (2000), and others have been applied by a number of researchers to economic data, particularly by Swanson and ...

Christina and David Romer’s paper ‘Does Monetary Policy Matter?’ advocates the so-called ‘narrative’ approach to causal inference. We demonstrate that this method will not sustain causal inference. First, it is impossible ...