IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cnb/wpaper/2023-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Uncertain Trends in Economic Policy Uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Nino Buliskeria
  • Jaromir Baxa
  • Tomas Sestorad

Abstract

The news-based Economic Policy Uncertainty indices (EPU) of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom display discernible trends that can be found neither in other European countries nor in other uncertainty indicators. Therefore, we replicate the EPU index of European countries and show that these trends are sensitive to the rather arbitrary choice of normalizing the raw counts of news related to economic policy uncertainty by the count of all newspaper articles. We show that an alternative normalization by news on economic policy leads to different long-term dynamics with less pronounced trends and markedly lower uncertainty during recent periods of uncertainty such as Brexit or the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, our results suggest that the effects of uncertainty related to these events on economic activity may have been overestimated.

Suggested Citation

  • Nino Buliskeria & Jaromir Baxa & Tomas Sestorad, 2023. "Uncertain Trends in Economic Policy Uncertainty," Working Papers 2023/16, Czech National Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:cnb:wpaper:2023/16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cnb.cz/export/sites/cnb/en/economic-research/.galleries/research_publications/cnb_wp/cnbwp_2023_16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Husted, Lucas & Rogers, John & Sun, Bo, 2020. "Monetary policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 20-36.
    2. International Monetary Fund, 2016. "United Kingdom: Selected Issues," IMF Staff Country Reports 2016/169, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Charemza, Wojciech & Makarova, Svetlana & Rybiński, Krzysztof, 2022. "Economic uncertainty and natural language processing; The case of Russia," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 546-562.
    4. Barbara Rossi & Tatevik Sekhposyan, 2015. "Macroeconomic Uncertainty Indices Based on Nowcast and Forecast Error Distributions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 650-655, May.
    5. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Brandice Canes-Wrone & Steven J. Davis & Jonathan Rodden, 2014. "Why Has US Policy Uncertainty Risen since 1960?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 56-60, May.
    6. Sydney C. Ludvigson & Sai Ma & Serena Ng, 2021. "Uncertainty and Business Cycles: Exogenous Impulse or Endogenous Response?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 369-410, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Tobback, Ellen & Naudts, Hans & Daelemans, Walter & Junqué de Fortuny, Enric & Martens, David, 2018. "Belgian economic policy uncertainty index: Improvement through text mining," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 355-365.
    9. Jha, Manish & Liu, Hongyi & Manela, Asaf, 2021. "Natural Disaster Effects on Popular Sentiment Toward Finance," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(7), pages 2584-2604, November.
    10. Laurent Ferrara & Ignacio Hernando & Daniela Marconi (ed.), 2018. "International Macroeconomics in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis," Financial and Monetary Policy Studies, Springer, number 978-3-319-79075-6, December.
    11. International Monetary Fund, 2016. "United Kingdom: Selected Issues," IMF Staff Country Reports 2016/058, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Yujia, Li & Zixiang, Zhu & Ming, Che, 2024. "Exploring the relationship between China's economic policy uncertainty and business cycles: Exogenous impulse or endogenous responses?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    2. Beckmann, Joscha & Davidson, Sharada Nia & Koop, Gary & Schüssler, Rainer, 2023. "Cross-country uncertainty spillovers: Evidence from international survey data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    3. 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).
    4. Himounet, Nicolas, 2022. "Searching the nature of uncertainty: Macroeconomic and financial risks VS geopolitical and pandemic risks," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 1-31.
    5. 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.
    6. Giovanni Caggiano & Efrem Castelnuovo & Gabriela Nodari, 2014. "Uncertainty and Monetary Policy in Good and Bad Times," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0188, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    7. Tosapol Apaitan & Pongsak Luangaram & Pym Manopimoke, 2022. "Uncertainty in an emerging market economy: evidence from Thailand," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 933-989, March.
    8. Dario Caldara & Chiara Scotti & Molin Zhong, 2021. "Macroeconomic and Financial Risks: A Tale of Mean and Volatility," International Finance Discussion Papers 1326, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Michael Ryan, 2020. "An Anchor in Stormy Seas: Does Reforming Economic Institutions Reduce Uncertainty? Evidence from New Zealand," Working Papers in Economics 20/11, University of Waikato.
    10. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2022_005 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. 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.
    12. Amélie Charles & Olivier Darné & Fabien Tripier, 2017. "Uncertainty and the Macroeconomy," Post-Print hal-01549625, HAL.
    13. Amélie Charles & Olivier Darné & Fabien Tripier, 2018. "Uncertainty and the macroeconomy: evidence from an uncertainty composite indicator," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(10), pages 1093-1107, February.
    14. Saygin Sahinoz & Evren Erdogan Cosar, 2020. "Quantifying uncertainty and identifying its impacts on the Turkish economy," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 365-387, May.
    15. Nicolas Himounet & Francisco Serranito & Julien Vauday, 2021. "Uncertainty is bad for Business. Really?," Working Papers 2021.03, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    16. Ansgar Belke & Thomas Osowski, 2019. "International Effects Of Euro Area Versus U.S. Policy Uncertainty: A Favar Approach," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 453-481, January.
    17. Ambrocio, Gene, 2020. "Inflationary household uncertainty shocks," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 5/2020, Bank of Finland.
    18. Christou, Christina & Gupta, Rangan, 2020. "Forecasting equity premium in a panel of OECD countries: The role of economic policy uncertainty," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 243-248.
    19. 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.
    20. Meinen, Philipp & Roehe, Oke, 2017. "On measuring uncertainty and its impact on investment: Cross-country evidence from the euro area," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 161-179.
    21. Nina Biljanovska & Francesco Grigoli & Martina Hengge, 2021. "Fear thy neighbor: Spillovers from economic policy uncertainty," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 409-438, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic policy uncertainty; reliability; reproducibility; trend-cycle decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E66 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General Outlook and Conditions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cnb:wpaper:2023/16. 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: Jan Babecky (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cnbgvcz.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.