News, Uncertainty and Economic Fluctuations (No News is Good News)

Mario Forni, Luca Gambetti and Luca Sala ()

Center for Economic Research (RECent) from University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi"

Abstract: We formalize the idea that uncertainty is generated by news about future developments in economic conditions which are not perfectly predictable by the agents. Using a simple model of limited information, we show that uncertainty shocks can be obtained as the square of news shocks. We develop a two-step econometric procedure to estimate the effects of news and we find highly nonlinear e ects. Large news shocks increase uncertainty. This mitigates the effects of good news and amplifies the effects of bad news in the short run. By contrast, small news shocks reduce uncertainty and increase output in the short run. The Volcker recession and the Great Recession were exacerbated by the uncertainty effects of news.

Keywords: news shocks; uncertainty shocks; imperfect information; structural VARs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mod:recent:132

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