IDENTIFICATION

(Statistics) A term used to describe the ability to determine an econometric model's structural parameters, i.e., the coefficients of the exogenous (or independent) variables. An econometric model is said to be exactly identified if the data support a unique set of parameters for the independent variables. A model is said to be Under-identified if there is no way of estimating all the structural parameters and Over-identified if more than one value is obtainable for some parameters.