IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/obuest/v84y2022i1p21-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks: Evidence from Geopolitical Swings on the Korean Peninsula

Author

Listed:
  • Jongrim Ha
  • Seohyun Lee
  • Inhwan So

Abstract

Using a novel set of instrumental variables in a structural VAR framework, we investigate the economic impact of uncertainty shocks from geopolitical swings on the Korean Peninsula over 2003–17. We construct robust instrumental variables for these shocks based on high‐frequency changes in financial asset returns and their volatilities around the geopolitical events. The empirical results suggest that heightened geopolitical uncertainty has negative impacts on macroeconomic outcomes in South Korea. We provide evidence that financial and capital markets play a key role in the transmission of geopolitical uncertainty shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Jongrim Ha & Seohyun Lee & Inhwan So, 2022. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks: Evidence from Geopolitical Swings on the Korean Peninsula," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(1), pages 21-56, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:obuest:v:84:y:2022:i:1:p:21-56
    DOI: 10.1111/obes.12456
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12456
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/obes.12456?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabaix, Xavier & Verdelhan, Adrien & Rancière, Romain & Farhi, Emmanuel & Fraiberger, Samuel P., 2009. "Crash Risk in Currency Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 7322, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Robert J. Barro & Tao Jin, 2011. "On the Size Distribution of Macroeconomic Disasters," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(5), pages 1567-1589, September.
    3. Nicholas Bloom & Max Floetotto & Nir Jaimovich & Itay Saporta†Eksten & Stephen J. Terry, 2018. "Really Uncertain Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(3), pages 1031-1065, May.
    4. Cosmin L. Ilut & Martin Schneider, 2014. "Ambiguous Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2368-2399, August.
    5. Haroon Mumtaz & Francesco Zanetti, 2013. "The Impact of the Volatility of Monetary Policy Shocks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(4), pages 535-558, June.
    6. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Pablo Guerron-Quintana & Juan F. Rubio-Ramirez & Martin Uribe, 2011. "Risk Matters: The Real Effects of Volatility Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2530-2561, October.
    7. Scott R Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Stephen J Terry, 2024. "Using Disasters to Estimate the Impact of Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(2), pages 720-747.
    8. Kuttner, Kenneth N., 2001. "Monetary policy surprises and interest rates: Evidence from the Fed funds futures market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 523-544, June.
    9. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801, June.
    10. Jongrim Ha & M. Ayhan Kose & Franziska Ohnsorge, 2019. "Inflation in Emerging and Developing Economies," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 30657.
    11. Park, Cheolbeom & Park, Suyeon, 2020. "Rare disaster risk and exchange rates: An empirical investigation of South Korean exchange rates under tension between the two Koreas," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    12. Dario Caldara & Matteo Iacoviello, 2022. "Measuring Geopolitical Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(4), pages 1194-1225, April.
    13. Michele Piffer & Maximilian Podstawski, 2018. "Identifying Uncertainty Shocks Using the Price of Gold," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(616), pages 3266-3284, December.
    14. Young Han Kim & Hosung Jung, 2014. "Investor Trading Behavior Around the Time of Geopolitical Risk Events: Evidence from South Korea," Working Papers 2014-10, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    15. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Isaac Kleshchelski & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "Do Peso Problems Explain the Returns to the Carry Trade?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(3), pages 853-891.
    16. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    17. Andrea Carriero & Haroon Mumtaz & Konstantinos Theodoridis & Angeliki Theophilopoulou, 2015. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks under Measurement Error: A Proxy SVAR Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(6), pages 1223-1238, September.
    18. Mark Gertler & Peter Karadi, 2015. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 44-76, January.
    19. Baker, Scott R. & Bloom, Nicholas, 2013. "Does uncertainty reduce growth? Using disasters as natural experiments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121906, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Bordo, Michael D. & Duca, John V. & Koch, Christoffer, 2016. "Economic policy uncertainty and the credit channel: Aggregate and bank level U.S. evidence over several decades," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 90-106.
    21. Lee, Eun Kyung & Park, Kwangyong, 2021. "Identifying government spending shocks and multipliers in Korea," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    22. Robert J. Barro, 2006. "Rare Disasters and Asset Markets in the Twentieth Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 823-866.
    23. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Pablo Guerrón-Quintana & Keith Kuester & Juan Rubio-Ramírez, 2015. "Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3352-3384, November.
    24. Refet S Gürkaynak & Brian Sack & Eric Swanson, 2005. "Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? The Response of Asset Prices to Monetary Policy Actions and Statements," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    25. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    26. JonasD.M. Fisher & Ryan Peters, 2010. "Using Stock Returns to Identify Government Spending Shocks," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(544), pages 414-436, May.
    27. Michael Siemer & Adrien Verdelhan & Francois Gourio, 2015. "Uncertainty and International Capital Flows," 2015 Meeting Papers 880, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    28. Karel Mertens & Morten O. Ravn, 2013. "The Dynamic Effects of Personal and Corporate Income Tax Changes in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1212-1247, June.
    29. R?diger Bachmann & Steffen Elstner & Eric R. Sims, 2013. "Uncertainty and Economic Activity: Evidence from Business Survey Data," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 217-249, April.
    30. Andrei A Levchenko & Nitya Pandalai-Nayar, 2020. "Tfp, News, and “Sentiments”: the International Transmission of Business Cycles," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 302-341.
    31. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2012. "Credit Spreads and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1692-1720, June.
    32. Jae Sim & Egon Zakrajsek & Simon Gilchrist, 2010. "Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and Investment Dynamics," 2010 Meeting Papers 1285, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    33. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    34. Youngju Kim & Hyunjoon Lim, 2018. "Which External Shock Matters in Small Open Economies? US Economic Policy Uncertainty vs. Global Risk Aversion," Working Papers 2018-29, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    35. Lutz Kilian, 2008. "Exogenous Oil Supply Shocks: How Big Are They and How Much Do They Matter for the U.S. Economy?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 216-240, May.
    36. Gerlach, Jeffrey R. & Yook, Youngsuk, 2016. "Political conflict and foreign portfolio investment: Evidence from North Korean attacks," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 178-196.
    37. Cesa-Bianchi, Ambrogio & Sokol, Andrej, 2022. "Financial shocks, credit spreads, and the international credit channel," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    38. Robert B. Barsky & Eric R. Sims, 2012. "Information, Animal Spirits, and the Meaning of Innovations in Consumer Confidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1343-1377, June.
    39. Sangyup Choi & Myungkyu Shim, 2019. "Financial vs. Policy Uncertainty in Emerging Market Economies," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 297-318, April.
    40. Byung-Yeon Kim & Gérard Roland, 2014. "How credible is the North Korean threat?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 22(3), pages 433-459, July.
    41. Sims, Christopher A & Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1990. "Inference in Linear Time Series Models with Some Unit Roots," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 113-144, January.
    42. Isaiah Andrews & James H. Stock & Liyang Sun, 2019. "Weak Instruments in Instrumental Variables Regression: Theory and Practice," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 727-753, August.
    43. Jeffrey R. Gerlach & Youngsuk Yook, 2016. "Political Conflict and Foreign Portfolio Investment : Evidence from North Korean Attacks," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-037, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    44. Leduc, Sylvain & Liu, Zheng, 2016. "Uncertainty shocks are aggregate demand shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 20-35.
    45. repec:mcb:jmoncb:v:45:y:2013:i::p:535-558 is not listed on IDEAS
    46. Jongrim Ha & Inhwan So, 2017. "Which Monetary Shocks Matter in Small Open Economies? Evidence from SVARs," Working Papers 2017-2, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grebe, Moritz & Kandemir, Sinem & Tillmann, Peter, 2023. "Uncertainty about the war in Ukraine: Measurement and effects on the German business cycle," IMFS Working Paper Series 184, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    2. Grebe, Moritz & Kandemir, Sinem & Tillmann, Peter, 2024. "Uncertainty about the war in Ukraine: Measurement and effects on the German economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 493-506.
    3. Moritz Grebe & Sinem Kandemir & Peter Tillmann, 2023. "Uncertainty about the War in Ukraine: Measurement and Effects on the German Business Cycle," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202314, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    4. Khan, Khalid & Khurshid, Adnan & Cifuentes-Faura, Javier, 2023. "Investigating the relationship between geopolitical risks and economic security: Empirical evidence from central and Eastern European countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Seohyun Lee & Inhwan So & Jongrim Ha, 2018. "Identifying Uncertainty Shocks due to Geopolitical Swings in Korea," Working Papers 2018-26, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    2. Michele Piffer & Maximilian Podstawski, 2018. "Identifying Uncertainty Shocks Using the Price of Gold," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(616), pages 3266-3284, December.
    3. Stefano Fasani & Haroon Mumtaz & Lorenza Rossi, 2023. "Monetary Policy and Firm Dynamics," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 278-296, January.
    4. Bachmann, Rüdiger & Born, Benjamin & Elstner, Steffen & Grimme, Christian, 2019. "Time-varying business volatility and the price setting of firms," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 82-99.
    5. Giovanni Pellegrino & Federico Ravenna & Gabriel Züllig, 2021. "The Impact of Pessimistic Expectations on the Effects of COVID‐19‐Induced Uncertainty in the Euro Area," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(4), pages 841-869, August.
    6. Giovanni Pellegrino, 2021. "Uncertainty and monetary policy in the US: A journey into nonlinear territory," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(3), pages 1106-1128, July.
    7. Miescu, Mirela S., 2023. "Uncertainty shocks in emerging economies: A global to local approach for identification," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    8. Alessandri, Piergiorgio & Gazzani, Andrea & Vicondoa, Alejandro, 2023. "Are the effects of uncertainty shocks big or small?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    9. Kim, Wongi, 2019. "Government spending policy uncertainty and economic activity: US time series evidence," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Josué Diwambuena & Jean-Paul K. Tsasa, 2021. "The Real Effects of Uncertainty Shocks: New Evidence from Linear and Nonlinear SVAR Models," BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series BEMPS87, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen.
    11. Husted, Lucas & Rogers, John & Sun, Bo, 2020. "Monetary policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 20-36.
    12. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Pablo Guerron-Quintana, 2020. "Uncertainty Shocks and Business Cycle Research," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 118-166, August.
    13. Gupta, Rangan & Ma, Jun & Risse, Marian & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "Common business cycles and volatilities in US states and MSAs: The role of economic uncertainty," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 317-337.
    14. Pierluigi Balduzzi & Emanuele Brancati & Marco Brianti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2019. "Populism, Political Risk and the Economy: Lessons from Italy," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 989, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 28 Apr 2020.
    15. Leduc, Sylvain & Liu, Zheng, 2016. "Uncertainty shocks are aggregate demand shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 20-35.
    16. Olli Palm'en, 2022. "Macroeconomic Effect of Uncertainty and Financial Shocks: a non-Gaussian VAR approach," Papers 2202.10834, arXiv.org.
    17. Forni, Mario & Gambetti, Luca & Sala, Luca, 2021. "Downside and Upside Uncertainty Shocks," CEPR Discussion Papers 15881, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Abiad, Abdul & Qureshi, Irfan A., 2023. "The macroeconomic effects of oil price uncertainty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    19. Alessandri, Piergiorgio & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2019. "Financial regimes and uncertainty shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 31-46.
    20. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:obuest:v:84:y:2022:i:1:p:21-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.