Andrea Roventini

This work investigates the statistical properties of aggregate output growth rates in the U.S. and Italy. We show that in both countries growth rates follow an exponential-power density, with tails that are fatter than a normal distribution. Furthermore, fat tails appear to be robust with respect to: (i) the output measure employed in the analysis; (ii) the presence of outliers, autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity; (iii) the family of theoretical density employed in the analysis. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for economics and econometrics.