%0 Electronic Book %A Ascari, Guido and Fagiolo, Giorgio and Roventini, Andrea %I Laboratory of Economics and Management, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies %C Pisa %D 2012 %G English %B LEM working paper series %~ Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig %T Fat-tail distributions and business-cycle models %U http://hdl.handle.net/10419/89284 %X Recent empirical findings suggest that macroeconomic variables are seldom normally distributed. For example, the distributions of aggregate output growth-rate time series of many OECD countries are well approximated by symmetric exponential-power (EP) densities, with Laplace fat tails. In this work, we assess whether Real Business Cycle (RBC) and standard medium-scale New-Keynesian (NK) models are able to replicate this statistical regularity. We simulate both models drawing Gaussian- vs Laplace-distributed shocks and we explore the statistical properties of simulated time series. Our results cast doubts on whether RBC and NK models are able to provide a satisfactory representation of the transmission mechanisms linking exogenous shocks to macroeconomic dynamics. -- Growth-Rate Distributions ; Normality ; Fat Tails ; Time Series ; Exponential-Power Distributions ; Laplace Distributions ; DSGE Models ; RBC Models %Z https://katalog.gfzk.de/Record/0-690060882 %U https://katalog.gfzk.de/Record/0-690060882