The impulse responses are based on a Cholesky decomposition of the variance-covariance
matrix of the error terms from estimation of the VAR. Foreign price inflation is taken to be
exogenous and affects all the other variables in the model, both in the short run and in the
long run. The ordering of variables that was used for the Cholesky decomposition was the
following: the nominal interest rate, real GDP growth, growth of total credit to the economy,
percentage changes in the nominal effective exchange rate, and headline inflation. This
implies that the nominal interest rate affects all the other endogenous variables in the model
in the short run; real GDP growth does not impact the nominal interest rate
contemporaneously but does impact the other three endogenous variables; growth of total
credit to the economy affects only the nominal effective exchange rate and headline inflation
in the short run; nominal effective exchange rate movements have a contemporaneous impact
only on inflation; and inflation is affected in the short-run by all the other variables in the
model, but does not a short-run contemporaneous impact on the other endogenous variables
in the model.