IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v47y2015i42p4511-4534.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do market prices aggregate information about macroeconomic uncertainty (or risk)?

Author

Listed:
  • James Peery Cover
  • Hye-Jin Lee

Abstract

This article examines several economic variables that represent either confidence in future economic conditions or the degree of risk/uncertainty about future conditions in order to determine which contain more information about future employment and output. Some of these variables are prices, while others are from surveys. Causality tests, historical decompositions within a VAR and out-of-sample forecasts are among the tools used. This article concludes that monthly stock returns contain much more information about future economic conditions than the other variables. The spread between Moody's BAA and AAA bonds, the spread between the constant maturity 10-year government bond and the federal funds rate, as well as uncertainty in future economic conditions as measured by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Business Outlook Survey also provide information about future economic conditions. Notably, this article finds that monthly stock returns contain more information about future economic conditions than does the vix and that variables based on market prices provide more information than survey data. This result provides some support for the notion that market prices aggregate information.

Suggested Citation

  • James Peery Cover & Hye-Jin Lee, 2015. "Do market prices aggregate information about macroeconomic uncertainty (or risk)?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(42), pages 4511-4534, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:47:y:2015:i:42:p:4511-4534
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1031872
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2015.1031872
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2015.1031872?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Estrella, Arturo & Mishkin, Frederic S., 1997. "The predictive power of the term structure of interest rates in Europe and the United States: Implications for the European Central Bank," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 1375-1401, July.
    2. 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.
    3. Plott, Charles R & Sunder, Shyam, 1988. "Rational Expectations and the Aggregation of Diverse Information in Laboratory Security Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1085-1118, September.
    4. James Peery Cover, 2011. "Risk and Macroeconomic Activity," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 78(1), pages 149-166, July.
    5. James Peery Cover, 2011. "Risk and Macroeconomic Activity," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 78(1), pages 149-166, July.
    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. Vladimir Arčabić & James Peery Cover, 2016. "Uncertainty and the effectiveness of fiscal policy," EFZG Working Papers Series 1611, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb.
    2. Quynh Trang Phan & Poomthan Rangkakulnuwat, 2022. "How price informativeness affects the sensitivity of investment-to-stock price in Vietnamese listed firms," Afro-Asian Journal of Finance and Accounting, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 12(1), pages 28-61.
    3. Gabriel Caldas Montes & André Almeida, 2017. "Corruption and business confidence: a panel data analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(4), pages 2692-2702.
    4. André Filipe Guedes Almeida & Gabriel Caldas Montes, 2020. "Effects of crime and violence on business confidence: evidence from Rio de Janeiro," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 47(7), pages 1669-1688, May.

    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. Costantini, Mauro & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2022. "What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    2. Vladimir Arčabić & James Peery Cover, 2016. "Uncertainty and the effectiveness of fiscal policy," EFZG Working Papers Series 1611, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb.
    3. Nikolay Hristov & Markus Roth, 2019. "Uncertainty Shocks and Financial Crisis Indicators," CESifo Working Paper Series 7839, CESifo.
    4. Idriss Fontaine, 2021. "Uncertainty and Labour Force Participation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(2), pages 437-471, April.
    5. Salzmann, Leonard, 2020. "The Impact of Uncertainty and Financial Shocks in Recessions and Booms," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224588, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Marfatia, Hardik A., 2015. "Monetary policy's time-varying impact on the US bond markets: Role of financial stress and risks," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 103-123.
    7. Alessandri, Piergiorgio & Mumtaz, Haroon, 2019. "Financial regimes and uncertainty shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 31-46.
    8. Seitz, Franz & Baumann, Ursel & Albuquerque, Bruno, 2015. "The information content of money and credit for US activity," Working Paper Series 1803, European Central Bank.
    9. Franck Sédillot, 2001. "La pente des taux contient-elle de l'information sur l'activité économique future ?," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 147(1), pages 141-157.
    10. Chen, Cheng & Senga, Tatsuro & Sun, Chang & Zhang, Hongyong, 2023. "Uncertainty, imperfect information, and expectation formation over the firm’s life cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 60-77.
    11. Carmen Orden‐Cruz & Jessica Paule‐Vianez & Júlio Lobão, 2023. "The effect of Economic Policy Uncertainty on the credit risk of US commercial banks," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 3420-3436, July.
    12. Wensheng Kang & Ronald A. Ratti & Joaquin Vespignani, 2020. "Impact of global uncertainty on the global economy and large developed and developing economies," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(22), pages 2392-2407, May.
    13. Aleksejs Krecetovs & Pasquale Della Corte, 2016. "Macro uncertainty and currency premia," 2016 Meeting Papers 624, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Nuzzo, Simone & Morone, Andrea, 2017. "Asset markets in the lab: A literature review," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 42-50.
    15. Brock, William A. & Hommes, Cars H. & Wagener, Florian O. O., 2005. "Evolutionary dynamics in markets with many trader types," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 7-42, February.
    16. Herwartz, Helmut & Lange, Alexander & Maxand, Simone, 2019. "Statistical identification in SVARs - Monte Carlo experiments and a comparative assessment of the role of economic uncertainties for the US business cycle," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 375, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    17. Istiak, Khandokar & Serletis, Apostolos, 2020. "Risk, uncertainty, and leverage," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 257-273.
    18. Straub, Ludwig & Ulbricht, Robert, 2015. "Endogenous Uncertainty and Credit Crunches," TSE Working Papers 15-604, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Dec 2017.
    19. Arigoni, Filippo & Lenarčič, Črt, 2020. "The impact of trade policy uncertainty shocks on the Euro Area," MPRA Paper 100832, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Nakaota, Hiroshi & Fukuta, Yuichi, 2013. "The leading indicator property of the term spread and the monetary policy factors in Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 85-98.

    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:taf:applec:v:47:y:2015:i:42:p:4511-4534. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.