This paper is concerned with multivariate refinement equations of the type ψ = ∑α∈Zs a(α)ψ(Mx - α),where ψ is the unknown function defined on the s-dimensional Euclidean space Rs, a is a finitely supported nonnegative sequence on Zs, and M is an s × s dilation matrix with m := |detM|. We characterize the existence of L2-solution of refinement equation in terms of spectral radius of a certain finite matrix or transition operator associated with refinement mask a and dilation matrix M. For s = 1 and M = 2, the sufficient and necessary conditions are obtained to characterize the existence of continuous solution of this refinement equation.