Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters

Soojin Jo and Rodrigo Sekkel

Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada

Abstract: We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of different economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real-time subjective measure of uncertainty in a simple framework. We jointly model and estimate macroeconomic (common) and indicator-specific uncertainties of four indicators, using a factor stochastic volatility model. Our macroeconomic uncertainty has three major spikes, aligned with the 1973–75, 1980, and 2007–09 recessions, while other recessions were characterized by increases in indicator-specific uncertainties. We also demonstrate for the first time in the literature that the selection of data vintages substantially affects the relative size of jumps in estimated uncertainty series. Finally, our macroeconomic uncertainty has a persistent negative impact on real economic activity, rather than producing “wait-and-see” dynamics.

Keywords: Business fluctuations and cycles; Econometric and statistical methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C38 E17 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for, nep-mac and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/swp2016-5.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters (2019)
Working Paper: Macroeconomic Uncertainty Through the Lens of Professional Forecasters (2017)
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:bca:bocawp:16-5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada 234 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G9, Canada. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().