IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2018-281.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trade Uncertainty and Investment in the Euro Area

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Christian H Ebeke
  • Jesse Siminitz

Abstract

We analyze the impact of trade policy uncertainty on investment in the euro area. Our identification strategy assumes that countries that are relatively more dependent on global trade networks exhibit a higher sensitivity of investment with respect to trade uncertainty. We find that the investment-to-GDP ratio is on average 0.8 percentage points lower for five quarters following a one standard deviation increase in the level of trade uncertainty. We demonstrate that these results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variables and that they are robust to different measures of trade uncertainty and trade openness. Our analysis suggests that the detrimental effect of trade tensions goes beyond lower trade growth, as uncertainty can reduce investment and the economy’s long-term growth potential.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Christian H Ebeke & Jesse Siminitz, 2018. "Trade Uncertainty and Investment in the Euro Area," IMF Working Papers 2018/281, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2018/281
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=46439
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    2. Nick Bloom & Stephen Bond & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Uncertainty and Investment Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 391-415.
    3. Leahy, John V & Whited, Toni M, 1996. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Investment: Some Stylized Facts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(1), pages 64-83, February.
    4. 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.
    5. Kyle Handley & Nuno Limão, 2018. "Trade and Investment under Policy Uncertainty: Theory and Firm Evidence," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Policy Externalities and International Trade Agreements, chapter 4, pages 89-122, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Gieseck Arne & Largent Yannis, 2016. "The Impact of Macroeconomic Uncertainty on Activity in the Euro Area," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(1), pages 25-52, May.
    7. Steven J. Davis, 2016. "An Index of Global Economic Policy Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 22740, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Robert Koopman & William Powers & Zhi Wang & Shang-Jin Wei, 2010. "Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: Tracing Value Added in Global Production Chains," NBER Working Papers 16426, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Cristina Constantinescu & Aaditya Mattoo & Michele Ruta, 2020. "Policy Uncertainty, Trade and Global Value Chains: Some Facts, Many Questions," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 57(2), pages 285-308, September.
    2. Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee & Jungho Baek, 2021. "Exchange rate volatility and domestic investment in G7: are the effects asymmetric?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 775-799, August.
    3. Oguzhan Cepni & David Gabauer & Rangan Gupta & Khuliso Ramabulana, 2020. "Time-Varying Spillover of US Trade War on the Growth of Emerging Economies," Working Papers 202002, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    4. Arigoni, Filippo & Lenarčič, Črt, 2020. "The impact of trade policy uncertainty shocks on the Euro Area," MPRA Paper 100832, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Klein, Paul-Olivier & Turk-Ariss, Rima, 2022. "Bank capital and economic activity," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    6. Wu, Chao & Zhao, Ke & Liu, Jinquan & Zhao, Xiuyi, 2024. "Cross-country spillovers of trade uncertainty and their formation mechanisms," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    7. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2023. "Duration of membership in the world trade organization and investment-oriented remittances inflows," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 258-277.
    8. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2022. "Duration of WTO Membership and Investment-Oriented Remittances Flows," EconStor Preprints 251274, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    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. Bańbura, Marta & Albani, Maria & Ambrocio, Gene & Bursian, Dirk & Buss, Ginters & de Winter, Jasper & Gavura, Miroslav & Giordano, Claire & Júlio, Paulo & Le Roux, Julien & Lozej, Matija & Malthe-Thag, 2018. "Business investment in EU countries," Occasional Paper Series 215, European Central Bank.
    2. Morikawa, Masayuki, 2019. "Uncertainty over production forecasts: An empirical analysis using monthly quantitative survey data," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 163-179.
    3. Gomez-Gonzalez, Jose Eduardo & Hirs-Garzon, Jorge & Uribe, Jorge M., 2020. "Global effects of US uncertainty: real and financial shocks on real and financial markets," Working papers 69, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    4. Iván Alfaro & Nicholas Bloom & Xiaoji Lin, 2024. "The Finance Uncertainty Multiplier," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(2), pages 577-615.
    5. Arbatli Saxegaard, Elif C. & Davis, Steven J. & Ito, Arata & Miake, Naoko, 2022. "Policy uncertainty in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. Berner, Julian & Buchholz, Manuel & Tonzer, Lena, 2020. "Asymmetric investment responses to firm-specific forecast errors," IWH Discussion Papers 5/2020, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    7. Al-Thaqeb, Saud Asaad & Algharabali, Barrak Ghanim, 2019. "Economic policy uncertainty: A literature review," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    8. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    9. Joëts, Marc & Mignon, Valérie & Razafindrabe, Tovonony, 2017. "Does the volatility of commodity prices reflect macroeconomic uncertainty?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 313-326.
    10. Bruno Ćorić & Vladimir Šimić, 2021. "Economic disasters and aggregate investment," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(6), pages 3087-3124, December.
    11. 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.
    12. Alessio Anzuini & Luca Rossi, 2021. "Fiscal policy in the US: a new measure of uncertainty and its effects on the American economy," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2613-2634, November.
    13. Sabani, Nazmie & Bales, Stephan & Burghof, Hans-Peter, 2024. "On the different impact of local and national sources of policy uncertainty on sectoral stock volatility," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(PB).
    14. Bartram, Sohnke M. & Brown, Gregory W. & Stulz, Rene M., 2016. "Why Does Idiosyncratic Risk Increase with Market Risk?," Working Paper Series 2016-13, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    15. Shinohara, Takeshi & Okuda, Tatsushi & Nakajima, Jouchi, 2021. "Characteristics of Uncertainty Indices in the Macroeconomy," Economic Review, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 72(3), pages 246-267, July.
    16. Gianluca Femminis, 2019. "Risk aversion heterogeneity and the investment–uncertainty relationship," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 223-264, August.
    17. Gabriel P. Mathy, 2020. "How much did uncertainty shocks matter in the Great Depression?," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(2), pages 283-323, May.
    18. 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.
    19. Graziano Moramarco, 2022. "Measuring Global Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Cross-Country Uncertainty Spillovers," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-29, December.
    20. Ying Tung Chan, 2019. "The Environmental Impacts and Optimal Environmental Policies of Macroeconomic Uncertainty Shocks: A Dynamic Model Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-26, September.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2018/281. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.