Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Risk: Collective Optimism of Small-Business Owners

Pankaj C. Patel and Mike Tsionas

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2022, vol. 46, issue 5, 1402-1422

Abstract: How small-business owners assess uncertainty and risk in the macroeconomic environment to report optimism toward their business activity is an important research question for policymakers and academics alike. Drawing on a monthly optimism index and a variety of uncertainty and volatility (risk) trackers from January 1986 to June 2017, in line with the expectation that business owners dislike uncertainty in economic policy, economic policy uncertainty may lower optimism. Business investment and sentiment volatility, however, contributed positively to optimism. The findings provide preliminary implications for policymakers in targeting indicators salient to the optimism index of small-business owners.

Keywords: risk; uncertainty; collective optimism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1042258720985475 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:entthe:v:46:y:2022:i:5:p:1402-1422

DOI: 10.1177/1042258720985475

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().