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Addressing COVID-19 Outliers in BVARs with Stochastic Volatility

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  • Marcellino, Massimiliano
  • Clark, Todd
  • Carriero, Andrea
  • Mertens, Elmar

Abstract

Incoming data in 2020 posed sizable challenges for the use of VARs in economic analysis: Enormous movements in a number of series have had strong effects on parameters and forecasts constructed with standard VAR methods. We propose the use of VAR models with time-varying volatility that include a treatment of the COVID extremes as outlier observations. Typical VARs with time-varying volatility assume changes in uncertainty to be highly persistent. Instead, we adopt an outlier-adjusted stochastic volatility (SV) model for VAR residuals that combines transitory and persistent changes in volatility. In addition, we consider the treatment of outliers as missing data. Evaluating forecast performance over the last few decades in quasi-real time, we find that the outlier-augmented SV scheme does at least as well as a conventional SV model, while both out-perform standard homoskedastic VARs. Point forecasts made in 2020 from heteroskedastic VARs are much less sensitive to outliers in the data, and the outlier-adjusted SV model generates more reasonable gauges of forecast uncertainty than a standard SV model. At least pre-COVID, a close alternative to the outlier-adjusted model is an SV model with t-distributed shocks. Treating outliers as missing data also generates better-behaved forecasts than the conventional SV model. However, since uncertainty about the incidence of outliers is ignored in that approach, it leads to strikingly tight predictive densities.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcellino, Massimiliano & Clark, Todd & Carriero, Andrea & Mertens, Elmar, 2021. "Addressing COVID-19 Outliers in BVARs with Stochastic Volatility," CEPR Discussion Papers 15964, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15964
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bayesian vars; stochastic volatility; Outliers; Pandemics; forecasts;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • F47 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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