Political uncertainty in a data-rich environment

Scheffel, Eric Michael (2012): Political uncertainty in a data-rich environment.

Abstract

We asses the general robustness of previous findings claiming that policy uncertainty exerts non-trivial influences on the US economy. Measuring the dynamic effects from a shock to policy uncertainty within a FAVAR model permits gauging the response of many more variables to policy uncertainty than is possible in a simple VAR model. Our results summarized by impulse responses are all corrected for small sample bias using a bootstrap-after-bootstrap method. Our findings support the view of policy uncertainty exerting a statistically significant influence on the economy, which is however not always as economically significant for a number of variables as found in previous studies.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: policy uncertainty; FAVAR; factor analysis; principal component analysis; impulse response analysis; small-sample bias
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E22 - Investment ; Capital ; Intangible Capital ; Capacity; H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H41 - Public Goods; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E23 - Production; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E21 - Consumption ; Saving ; Wealth

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