Unusual shocks in our usual models
提出一种方法，让标准商业周期模型能解释新冠疫情这一不寻常事件。通过引入“新冠冲击”并利用2020年第二季度数据和专业预测，发现该冲击解释了早期宏观经济的大部分波动，具有通胀性且持续拖累经济活动。
We propose a method to allow usual business cycle models to account for the unusual COVID episode. The pandemic and the public and private responses to it are represented by a new shock called the Covid shock, which loads onto wedges that underlie the usual shocks and comes with news about its evolution. We apply our method to a standard medium-scale model, estimating the loadings with 2020q2 data and the evolving news using professional forecasts. The Covid shock accounts for most of the early macroeconomic dynamics, was inflationary and a persistent drag on activity, and the majority of its effects were unanticipated. We also show how the Covid shock can be used to estimate DSGE models with data before, during, and after the pandemic.