Asymmetric fluctuations and the third moments in the real business cycle theory

This paper examines the third moments in actual and simulated business cycles. The main goal is to answer the question whether a business cycle model can generate the asymmetry observed in the quarterly post war data. The results indicate that for third moments, the RBC model does not fit the data as well as it does for second moments. It is also shown that transitory shock can be better than persistent shock in matching the third moment, which implies an implication for modeling strategy of real business cycles theory. [E32].