Rare Shocks, Great Recessions

Authors

Daniel L. Greenwald

Marco Del Negro

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2013-01 | January 1, 2013

We estimate a DSGE model where rare large shocks can occur, by replacing the commonly used Gaussian assumption with a Student-t distribution. Results from the Smets and Wouters (2007) model estimated on the usual set of macroeconomic time series over the 1964-2011 period indicate that the Student-t specification is strongly favored by the data even when we allow for low-frequency variation in the volatility of the shocks, and that the estimated degrees of freedom are quite low for several shocks that drive U.S. business cycles, implying an important role for rare large shocks. This result holds even if we exclude the Great Recession period from the sample. We also show that inference about low-frequency changes in volatility and in particular, inference about the magnitude of the Great Moderation is different once we allow for fat tails.

Article Citation

Greenwald, Daniel L., Marco Del Negro, and Vasco Curdia. 2013. “Rare Shocks, Great Recessions,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2013-01. Available at https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2013-01

About the Author
Vasco Cúrdia
Vasco Cúrdia is a research advisor in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Learn more about Vasco Cúrdia