Difference between Granger causality and Instantaneous causality? What is the difference in terms of inference? Does Instantaneous captures the short term cause and effects?
 A: I was looking for the answer to this same question and I found it on the book Introduction to Modern Time Series Analysis (second edition) by Gebhard Kirchgassner, Jurgen Wolters and Uwe Hassler on page 97.
Granger Causality: x granger causes y if a model that uses current and past values of x and current and past values of y to predict future values of y has smaller forecast error than a model than only uses current and past values of y to predict y. In other words, Granger causality answers the following question: does the past of variable x help improve the prediction of future values of y?
Instantaneous Causality: x instantaneously Granger causes y if a model that uses current, past and future values of x and current and past values of y to predict y has smaller forecast error than a model than only uses current and past values of x and current and past values of y. In other words, Instantaneous granger causality answers the question: does knowing the future of x help me better predict the future of y? If I know that x is going to do, does it help me know what y is going to know?
I know this is an old question, but I thought I would answer it in case someone else is struggling as I was with this.
The book goes deeply into the math of these two metrics, so please take a look at it if you want a more formal answer.
