Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. iii Terms of use: Documents in AbstractUsing the Baker et al. (2013) index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries, this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty. We find that spillovers account for slightly more than one-fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries, with this share rising to one-half during the financial crisis. The United States and United Kingdom are responsible for a large fraction of the spillovers since the financial crisis, while Canada and the remaining countries are all net receivers of policy uncertainty shocks during and after this period. JEL classification: C3, D80, F42 Bank classification: Econometric and statistical methods RésuméÀ l'aide de l'indice d'incertitude sur la politique économique établi par Baker et autres (2013), les auteurs estiment les retombées de l'incertitude au sujet de la politique économique dans le cas de six pays développés. Ils constatent que ces effets d'entraînement contribuent pour un peu plus du quart à la dynamique de l'incertitude sur la politique économique dans ces pays, proportion qui a grimpé à 50 % durant la crise financière. Depuis cette dernière, une grande part des retombées de l'incertitude émanent des États-Unis et du Royaume-Uni. Quant au Canada et aux autres pays, ils ont surtout subi les chocs d'incertitude liés à la politique économique pendant et après cette période.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. iii Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractWe 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 realtime 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. JEL classification: C38, E17, E32 Bank classification: Business fluctuations and cycles; Econometric and statistical methods RésuméNous analysons l'évolution de l'incertitude macroéconomique aux États-Unis, à partir des erreurs de projection de différents indicateurs économiques. Celles-ci donnent des renseignements détaillés qui nous permettent de dégager une mesure subjective en temps réel de l'incertitude dans un cadre de référence simple. Nous avons à la fois modélisé et évalué l'incertitude macroéconomique (commune) et l'incertitude propre à quatre indicateurs, à l'aide d'un modèle factoriel à volatilité stochastique. D'après notre analyse, l'incertitude macroéconomique connaît trois pics principaux, qui coïncident avec les récessions de 1973-1975, de 1980 et de 2007-2009. Les autres récessions se caractérisent par une hausse de l'incertitude inhérente à chacun des indicateurs. Pour la première fois dans la littérature, nous démontrons également que le choix de la cuvée de données influe considérablement sur l'importance relative des sauts dans la série d'incertitudes évaluées. En dernier lieu, loin d'instaurer une dynamique attentiste, l'incertitude macroéconomique observée a une incidence défavorable persistante sur l'activité économique réelle. Classification JEL : C38, E17, E32 Classification de la Banque : Cycles et fluctuations économiques; Méthodes économétriques et statistiques iv Non-Technical SummaryThis paper an...

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Quantifying the effects of monetary policy is challenging and has generated a vast literature in empirical macroeconomics. Much of this literature uses vector autoregressions (VARs), identified with different approaches, and finds that the effects of monetary policy for the U.S. are relatively modest, with peak decline estimates ranging between 0.3 and 1 per cent for output following a 100-basis-point monetary innovation. However, Romer and Romer (2004; R&R henceforth) find much larger effects of U.S. monetary policy shocks using narrative methods. This strategy uses historical records to construct a series of intended interest rate changes at meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and then isolate the innovations to these interest rate changes that are orthogonal to the Federal Reserve's information set. A 100-basis-point shock from the R&R shock series translates into output and price level peak declines larger than 4 per cent. The study by Cloyne and Hurtgen (2016) extends the narrative approach to the U.K. and is, to our knowledge, the only one applying narrative methods to a country other than the U.S. Another important body of literature in monetary economics has documented important shifts in the conduct of monetary policy in the U.S. and abroad. Some prominent papers, such as Clarida et al. (2000), document that U.S. monetary policy has become more responsive to expected inflation after the Volcker disinflation. There is also evidence that monetary policy rules in small open economies have also changed significantly. For example, Alstadheim et al. (2013) show that the central banks of the U.K., Sweden and Canada shifted away from responding to exchange rate movements around the 1990s, when these countries implemented inflation-targeting (IT) regimes. Our paper builds on these two strands of literature and applies the narrative approach to Canada, providing new evidence on the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy and highlighting the importance of changes in the conduct of systematic monetary policy. We use historical documents to construct a series of intended changes in the target policy interest rate along with a novel database of real-time data and forecasts assembled from the Bank of Canada's staff economic projections from 1974 to 2015, to isolate the innovations to the intended policy changes that are orthogonal to the policymakers' information set. We find that following a 100-basis-point monetary policy shock, real monthly GDP has a peak decline of 1.0 per cent about 18 to 24 months after the shock and is less than 0.5 per cent lower after three years, while the price level (consumer price index) response is weaker and takes longer to materialize, falling by 0.4 per cent after three years. We show that it is crucial for these results to depart from R&R in two important ways: (i) by controlling for U.S. interest rates as well as the USD/CAD exchange rate in the policy-makers' information set, and (ii) by accounting for the structural break in the conduct of monetary policy caused ...